


Time and Memory

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Background - Freeform, Background Relationships, Future Fic, Gen, Science Fiction, au-ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 59,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. This is a story that's big enough that it will be told in pieces. I will try to get it done over the week. Science fiction. </p>
<p>The boy in Moriarty's bunker was no more than eighteen--thin, ginger, frightened by the special ops team that swarmed into his room in Kevlar, carrying assault weapons. When they asked him who he was, he said, quietly, "Mycroft. Mycroft Holmes." That news surprised Mycroft Holmes, the hidden master of MI6, profoundly.</p>
<p>Sherlock is a serious brat in this, particularly in this first section. IMO it's explained within the text, but if you want to understand BEFORE you read the installment, I suggest you check the end notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prisoner

The door of the hidden bunker broke in with a crash, and MI6 forces poured in, weapons at the ready, determined not to be taken by surprise by whatever desperate devices and evil engines Moriarty’s people might have hidden away here. Sirens whooped throughout the underground complex. The first ten minutes were a frenzied chaos of rattling weapons, fleeing personnel, blood…

Once the first large control room was taken, things slowed. The commander of the unit paused, then, evaluating the situation. They held the command center and now held the advantage of being able monitor much of the underground complex. The majority of the staff were now dead or held captive. However, there remained a stubborn and deadly few now locked behind barriers armed with who knew what, waiting like cornered rats, determined to make a fight of it even now.

Even a quick assessment of the effort and investment put into this place suggested it had been of importance to Moriarty—a source of power in some sense….

“Sir!”

The commander looked over, finding her security analyst bent over an array of displays and monitors. “What, Shandy?”

“Place is rigged to blow, sir.” Shandy’s hands raced over the banks of keyboards and switches. “Trying to shut down the automatic self-destruct, but…”

“Do we retreat?”

“I’m not… No. No, I’ve got the basics now. Keep ‘em out of the inner rooms, though—some of them have independent systems as well.”

“Will do. Put together a detail to deal with that, though. We’ve got to search the entire place eventually. The amount of effort Moriarty put into hiding this place, it’s got to hide something special.”

“Yes, ma’am. Let you know as soon as we can proceed, ma’am.”

She nodded and returned her attention to her surroundings. It was a plain, ugly place—concrete walls bare but for logos numbers and arrows painted in thick, glossy industrial enamel in primary colors. It appeared to be a lab of some sort, though it wasn’t her area of expertise to assess these things. Chemistry, maybe? Bio-weapons. She shivered, wondering what project Moriarty would consider worth the amount of time and investment the network had put into this place.

Hour after hour the teams cleared the way into the innermost, most highly guarded rooms, and found the hidden threat.

The boy, no more than eighteen if that, looked at them, big-eyed, fighting down terror with a fragile, fierce discipline that broke the commander’s heart. He was a tall ginger, at that beautiful, horrible gawky stage that reminded her of lanky colts and adolescent pups not yet grown into their paws and school boys kicking around hacky-sacks to practice their footie moves. He stood as tall as he could manage, head high, and swallowed hard looking at the arrayed warriors in their black assault uniforms, bristling with weapons.

“Please,” he said, softly. “Please, don’t shoot.” He held his hands out and up….

A pup not grown into its paws, the commander thought again as she looked at those long, slim hands. The boy was trying so hard, but his hands shook in spite of him.

“Please,” he said again. “I won’t fight. I don’t want to be here.” His voice cracked, then, as he said, “Please, just call my parents. I want to go home.”

She stepped forward, cautiously. “Shhhh, son. Shhhh. No one wants to hurt you. We’ll take things nice and slow, one step at a time, so no one panics. All right?”

He nodded, eyes grateful. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, I need you to step away from that desk, so we can see all of you. My people are trained to worry about hidden weapons, so stand clear. Tell me, son—what’s your name? Who are your parents?”

He moved warily out into the middle of the little room, hands still up and shaking. “Mycroft,” he said, softly. “Mycroft Holmes. My parents are Sigur and Moria Holmes of Surrey.”

The commander looked at the boy, feeling her world spin.

“Ah,” she said. “Ah…yes. All right…Mycroft. I’ll…see what we can do for you.” Then, as her people eased into the room to check for weapons and take custody of the boy, she tabbed her com unit.

“Anthea? Danville, here. Yeah, no, things are going fine. But—we’ve got a bit of a situation…”

oOo

Sherlock swept through the halls of Babylon-on-Thames, his Belfast sweeping around his calves, his temper a brooding presence like a storm on the horizon.

“Tell Mycroft I’m not amused. The least he could do is tell me why I’ve been called here.”

Anthea was impervious to his sullen growls. “Sorry, but we need your unprepared response,” she said. “We’ll brief you later, after you’ve taken a look.”

“Ridiculous. I’m perfectly capable of reserving judgement no matter what outrage of illogic you present.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said, cheerfully. “Still, it will be quick.”

“Not much to see, then?”

“You tell me,” she said, and tapped at a door.

“Come in?”

Young, male, a teen or young adult by the voice, polite, a bit unsure of himself…the voice oddly familiar in ways that sent odd winds blowing through the corridors of his Mind Palace…

Anthea opened the door and gestured Sherlock in. He swept past her, eyes scanning the room already.

He stopped, then.

“Oh.” He swallowed. “Oh.”

The boy looked at him, frowning. “Who…?”

Sherlock swallowed. “Mike?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed—and then it hit, and he sat, heavily. “Sherlock? Is… Billy, is that you?”

Instead of answering Sherlock swirled, glaring into Anthea’s face. “That--,” he snarled. “That—that has to be…that has to be a fake. What have you done with Mycroft?”

She glanced apologetically past him. “Mike? Sorry about this. We’ll be back in a little while.” She grabbed Sherlock by the elbow and pulled him back out of the room, closing the door behind her. “Come on, then. Mr. Holmes is waiting for you upstairs in his office. We needed you to see Mikey, there, first, though.”

“Mikey? Mikey?!” He paced down the halls toward the elevators at the end of the corridor, moving at near light-speeds. “That—that can’t be real. That can’t be… That can’t be right.”

“I take it he’s convincing.”

“He’s Mike. I…he’s just like Mike.”

“So he matches your memory.”

Sherlock, comparing the boy to the Mike in his Mind Palace, fought down the panic. “No,” he said, fear rising up. “No—he doesn’t match my memory, damn it. He _corrects_ it.”

Eleven-year-old Sherlock had never seen or understood his eighteen-year-old big brother had been so very, very young, and unsure of himself, and alone. Remembered-Mike ruled his rooms of the Mind Palace like a dictator, angel and devil, sinner and saint, torturer and savior—a vast, brooding, challenging beast.

The Mike who’d looked up at him just now, though, was just a child. A shy, reserved, controlled child…

Memories even deeper than those of the Mind Palace whispered that the second Mike was the true one.

oOo

“He’s…convincing, is he not?” Mycroft asked, studying his brother’s face.

“He’s fucking _real_ ,” Sherlock growled, moving restlessly in Mycroft’s office, refusing to stop or sit. “What the hell is he? Are you playing with clones, now? One lifetime as the British Government isn’t enough for you?”

“He’s not _my_ project, brother-dear. And—he may be a clone. It’s the most obvious answer. He’s certainly my genetic match. We’ve already done the gene sequencing, and there’s really no question he’s my exact twin in all details. Genetically he is me. But—if he’s my clone, well. There are…unexpected complications to the situation.”

Sherlock turned and froze him with a piercing look, furrows forming over his nose and brows. “Do stop beating around the bush. If he’s not your project, whose is he?”

“He was found in a hidden top secret lab of Moriarty’s, during a recent raid.”

Sherlock sat, then, finally, legs collapsing under him as he plummeted into the huge wrought-iron armchairs in front of Mycroft’s desk. “Moriarty?”

“His lab. His project.”

“Moriarty. He’s cloning people.”

“One assumes, yes.”

“That would explain quite a bit.”

“Perhaps. He’s eighteen, Sherlock. To all indications he’s aging normally. He…remembers eighteen years of experiences. If he’s what he appears, he’s been alive for eighteen years of existence.”

Sherlock nodded, thinking. “No—it’s not like he’s _your_ double. Far too much hair. They could hardly slip him into your place. And he wouldn’t explain Moriarty’s reappearance.”

Mycroft ignored the hair comment. One could expect no better of Sherlock. “It’s worse, Sherlock. Later, I need you to speak with him. Extensively. But—insofar as I can determine, his memories are mine.”

“You mean somehow someone researched you and programmed the kid?”

“No.” Mycroft rubbed his face, wearily. “Let’s try another approach, and work up to this. He’s got an appendectomy scar that is, in every way we can determine, the exact and perfect double of my own. His fingerprints are mine, when even a genetic twin’s would not be. He has a crooked little finger that exactly matches the skew of my own, from when I broke mine trying to bring you down from the old oak at Mummy and Father’s. He has the same chip I had on my front secondary left incisor—the one I had fixed in my final year at uni. He does not have any of the scars I have acquired in the years following my eighteenth year. Not the cut on my knee from where I fell on a broken beer bottle. Not the damage from the cobra-bite and the mangling the idiots attempted to treat it. Not the scar from the bullet I took in Gdansk. No scarring from my heart surgery. Yet he does have the scar hidden under my hair from that time you pushed me into Father’s file-cabinet. You remember? The time we never told Mummy and Father about? That scar, for what it’s worth, exists on no record whatsoever. No one should know about it but you and me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blinked. “Oh. That’s…unnerving.”

“Isn’t it? Now add in that the boy can explain how he got that scar. He remembers it in perfect detail. He can quote you. Do the words, ‘I was just trying to see if head wounds really do bleed more than other wounds” ring a bell, brother-mine?”

Sherlock twitched. “You…you never told anyone that story. Did you?”

“I did not.”

“Not even under drugged interrogation or something?”

“Never. Really, Sherlock, be realistic: what are the odds anyone would even think to ask about that sort of thing? About a scar no one can see and which isn’t on record?”

“Low.”

“Frankly, I’d consider the odds lower than the Marianas Trench is deep.”

“So you’ve talked to him and think he’s real?”

“No. I haven’t talked to him. My people have, and I’ve listened to every word and reviewed every video—but I’ve been delaying actually meeting him until I’m more sure what we’re dealing with. That’s where you come in, Little Brother. If anyone other than me can detect he’s a fake, it’s you.”

“You want me to question him?”

“I want you to do whatever it takes to work out what he is. Because right now I’m left with the completely unsettling belief that, somehow, in some way, this boy really is me at the age of eighteen.”

“Impossible.”

“So I would have thought.”

Sherlock sighed. “How do you want me to handle it?”

“For now? Talk to him here. But—eventually? Take him to Baker Street. With John married you have the spare room, and informal contact on a daily basis increases the odds of your being able to catch him out if he’s a fake.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. “Mycroft, I didn’t go through the past thirty-some years just to share quarters with you again. Especially with you as you were when you were eighteen.”

Mycroft studied his brother, and was amused. He risked a tight smirk. “Look at it this way, brother-dear. This time around, you’ll be the big brother. Won’t that be a treat?”

Sherlock started to say something rude and obnoxious in reply…only to slowly drift into fascinated trance as he contemplated the complex shift in power implied. Eventually, in a voice both intrigued and shaken, he said, “Oh.” Then, only slightly more tartly, he said, “Very well. If I must. But you’re paying for his expenses. As I recall your pizza-habit in those days was as bad as mine for cocaine a decade later.”

“Of course we’ll pay expenses,” Mycroft snapped. “He’ll need clothes, and a computer and a mobile…if he’s going to go out in the world, he’s going to need the basics. We won’t make you pay for that.”

“You just want control.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Make up your mind. Do you want me to cover expenses, whether it gives me control or not, or would you rather pay out of pocket?”

Sherlock grimaced. “All right, all right. I’d rather you paid, especially if you want me to get him decent tech. Credit card?”

Mycroft fished in his top desk drawer, and drew out one of several he used for business purposes. “Here. It’s got a limit, and they report hourly on use. I’ll freeze it if I see you using it to buy new lab equipment. Much less human body parts…”

“Spoilsport.”

“I’m also going to bring Lestrade in. That way you’ve got a confidant and ally, should you need one.”

“You mean I’ve got a watchdog and a handler.”

“I mean he’ll keep you from dressing the boy like a chav.”

“Don’t trust my taste?”

“Don’t trust your sense of humor, brother-mine.” Then, just as Sherlock started to pout, Mycroft sighed and smiled, ruefully. “Sorry. Really, sorry. The truth is, shopping with you can’t possibly do him as much damage as shopping with Mummy did. Just turn him out in something besides plaid shirts and trainers? And for the love of God, don’t put me… _him_ in anything like that lime-green anorak Mummy got me in ’85? He’s lived through that trauma; it would be good to spare him any further shocks.”

“You remember the year?”

Mycroft looked at him, and said, “Lime. Green. Anorak. Need I say more?”

Sherlock considered, grinned, and said, “No. I grant you, ‘85 was a very bad year.”

“It was a very bad look.”

Sherlock snorted. “On you they were all bad looks. But what the hell—sure. I’ll give it a try. I can’t possibly be a more rubbishy big brother than you were.”

Mycroft raised one brow—but did not deign to differ. Sherlock would find out soon enough that the role of big brother was more fraught that he knew…

oOo

Lestrade, meeting Sherlock and “Mike” at the front door of Babylon-on-Thames, cocked his head, fascinated. So this was what Mycroft had been like as a boy? Somehow he wasn’t what Lestrade had expected, and it wasn’t just that the kid was dressed in simple jeans and trainers with a perfectly ordinary blue t-shirt for a top.

One got used to the stately, distant presence of Mycroft Holmes doing his imitation of an ice sculpture: cool, clear, dazzlingly brilliant…and ever so slightly wet. This boy, though—the elements were there, if you looked for them. The eyes were intelligent and aware, but distant reserve in the man changed to uneasy shyness in the boy. Stately hauteur was converted to desperately held dignity in the gawky younger version. The poise of the man proved to be nothing more than the fierce refusal of the kid to give in to panic.

Part of him, seeing the kid, saluted Mycroft—both man and boy. If this was what Mycroft was in his heart and his memory, then he’d worked a perfect sort of alchemy in growing up and maturing. He’d turned soft carbon into shining diamond through the pure pressure of his own will. It was an accomplishment Lestrade could respect.

Later he would kick himself for failing to notice Sherlock’s attitude toward the boy, but at the time he was too busy taking in the surprise. He greeted Sherlock almost absently as they came down the pavement, then held his hand out to the kid, smiling. “Hey. I’m Greg Lestrade. I’ll be your backup contact when Sherlock’s busy, or just just get tired of dealing with the prat. And you’re Mike, right?”

The boy looked at him carefully, taking his time, blue-grey eyes assessing every detail. The wide mouth quirked and he gave a hesitant smile, holding his own hand out and taking Greg’s. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of switching over to ‘Mycroft.’ It’s my real name, and it seems more…dignified, somehow.”

Before Lestrade could answer Sherlock drawled, “What you mean is it sounds pompous and prissy, just like you.”

Lestrade frowned, unsettled by the malice. It was bad enough when Sherlock and Mycroft—adult Mycroft—needled each other, but adult Mycroft was more than able to hold his own against his brother. It was one thing to see Sherlock act the aggressor with an adult who could match him. It was another for him to initiate hostilities with a kid.

“Sherlock…”

The boy straightened, taking his hand back. He sighed. “Don’t mind me, Inspector. He’s always like that.” He shot Sherlock an uneasy, unhappy glance. “I…  Do you…? I mean…you know Sherlock’s my…brother? Did they tell you things are a bit…strange?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the kid—a mean, sulky look.

Lestrade’s mouth tightened as he watched the byplay, but he nodded, eyes sober. “I know what’s going on. Full briefing. Sherlock’s your younger brother. Only, yeah. Things are a bit strange.”

Sherlock sniffed. “Just because you don’t like having the tables turned….”

Mycroft…Mike… No. This wasn’t going to work. He looked at the young man. “Do you mind if I call you My? It’s not as serious as ‘Mycroft,’ but it’s more adult sounding than Mike, or Mikey. I just—I tend to shorten names. I doubt I’ll be able to stick to ‘Mycroft.’” Which was a lie, but at least it was a diplomatic one. He just couldn’t call this boy ‘Mycroft’ without his brains melting.

The kid gave a shy smile, and nodded. “Yes. I think that’s all right.” He glanced at Sherlock uneasily again. “Where are we going next?” he asked, quietly.

“Clothes.”

“I can probably get by with what I’ve got,” My said. “They brought my jeans and things from the bunker when we came. I’ve got about four days worth, and then we can wash them.”

“You look like a yoick. Bad enough you’re fat and pink and ginger and speckled. You don’t have to dress like ordinary people.”

The boy blushed crimson…and, yes, Lestrade thought, he had a redhead’s pale, clear skin and freckles.

“You look fine,” he said, “but I do think you’ll want some new things. You’d look sharp in a blazer and chinos.”

It wasn’t Mycroft Holmes’ “bespoke suit” look, but then an eighteen year-old kid couldn’t carry off Mycroft’s bespoke suits. This kid, though, might manage blazer and nice trousers and a well-chosen shirt. Maybe even a snappy hipster waistcoat. Anything to help that shaken ego. The boy’s pride was clinging to a cliff-edge by its fingernails already, and Sherlock was stomping on his fingers.

They piled into a cab. Lestrade managed to force Sherlock into the front, citing his long legs—though the boy’s were longer still. He and My sat in the back, and he watched as the boy’s eyes grew big and shocky as the modern City rolled by.

“Changed since the last time you saw it?” he asked.

My nodded, never looking away. “Yes. A lot.”

“When were you last up to the City?”

“Last year. I mean, ’86. Interviews for uni.”

“I thought—“ Lestrade cut himself off. The boy didn’t know about his adult self, yet. For all he knew he’d been kidnapped by The Doctor and dragged forward in the Tardis, skipping decades. He had no idea his adult self held degrees from Oxford, where he’d attended as a student at Baliol.

The kid shot him a glance, then, storm-blue eyes speculative.  He waited to see if Lestrade would say more.

Lestrade gave an uneasy smile, but stayed silent. This was going to be trickier than it had seemed going in. This boy was no slouch. He’d catch on if Lestrade were not careful.

My turned back to the window, then, taking in the modern City: the Gherkin, the Broadgate Tower, the Eye….

“This is all changed,” My said as they drove past Bishopsgate.

“IRA bombing in ’93,” Lestrade said. “Rebuilt since then.”

My looked at him again, steady and thoughtful, but saying nothing.

He was a funny looking kid, Lestrade thought. Not ugly, exactly—indeed, kind of sweet in his peculiarity. He wasn’t as beaky at eighteen as he’d be as he approached fifty, but he still had a long, sharp nose, set into a rather neat, shield-shaped face with clever, bright little eyes, like a chipper bird. The combination of small eyes, long nose, wide mouth and sharp chin gave him the look of a friendly anime gremlin—an illusion only increased by the shock of blazing bright hair.

Indeed, while he’d be called a ‘ginger,’ his hair was really the bright color of fox fur and autumn leaves and polished carnelians, and what he had was dense, with a soft, deep wave. Lestrade bet the boy’s first sweetheart had been just plain destroyed by that hair—then wondered if the kid had even had his first sweetheart, yet. With those calm, shy eyes it was hard to guess.

“Stop ogling Mikey,” Sherlock said, from the front seat, voice fierce. “Just because he’s ugly doesn’t mean you have to stare.”

“He’s not ugly,” Lestrade protested reflexively, then realized with stunned amazement that Sherlock had never really meant the boy was—it had been sheer spite. The look in Sherlock’s eyes was bitter jealousy and resentment. “Sherlock…”

Sherlock’s blue eyes shuttered, then went limpid in innocence. “I’m sorry, Mikey. I didn’t mean it. Just teasing.” The voice was so cheerful and unthreatening.

Lestrade glanced back at My. The kid was scowling and shaken, caught between anger and hurt. He pulled into himself with a scowl that stripped away all the charm that had been there mere moments before. “How long till we get there,” he asked, sullenly.

Lestrade, looking back and forth between the two brothers, suddenly realized it was going to be a very long day…

oOo

“When are they supposed to be here, John?” Mary called from upstairs in John’s old room.

“Anytime in the next hour,” John called back, “depending on traffic and any side errands they think of. How’s it going?”

“I’ve got it clean and I’ve managed to pile the boxes on the side of the room. Hid them under a sheet. If the boy’s here long we should arrange for Sherlock to sort through what he’s been storing up here and either get rid of it or store it somewhere else. Maybe down in the basement apartment?” She came down the stairs and stood in the door, looking like a comic housewife from an old fifties movie—a big flowered kerchief tied over her hair, dust over her apron, and the baby on her hip.

“Maybe we could clean up the basement apartment and get it fixed up and let the boy have it,” John said, smiling at the sight of “his two girls.” “Kid’s not going to have it easy living with Sherlock.”

“I didn’t know Sherlock had a cousin,” Mary said. “He never said.”

John shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t know he had _parents_ until last year.”

“Well he and Mycroft didn’t hatch from an egg.”

John rolled his eyes as he bagged the last of the really scary stuff from the fridge. “Couldn’t prove it by me. Here—dump that on the landing to go down to the bins, will you? I’ve got to wipe out the fridge and pile in the new groceries. At least the kid will have real food for the first week, not human body parts.”

They worked together quietly for the next forty minutes, cleaning and dusting and tidying as best they could while leaving most of Sherlock’s piles and heaps and experiments intact. Mary looked around, and her eyes went a bit sad.

“Maybe we should invite the boy to stay with us,” she said, looking at the walls, with the ugly Victorian-style wallpaper, and the spray-paint-and-bullet-hole smiley face, and the surveillance photos pinned to the wall. The furniture was worn, the room dark but for the two front windows half-draped with crimson velvet from some prior century. “It’s not exactly…well… _cheerful_ , is it?”

“He’s a boy,” John said with false confidence. “He’ll be fine. Boys don’t need décor.”

“Like you’re not the one who fussed over what carpet to put down,” Mary said, chuckling.

The door opened, below, and there was a clatter of feet and a murmur of voices. Mary and John gave a quick glance around, then moved to stand near the fireplace, making room for Sherlock and his guests to come in.

John studied the boy with interested eyes, seeing instantly the family resemblance. He didn’t look much like Sherlock, but there was no question he was related to Mycroft, he thought. Indeed, the poor kid would probably look almost identical once he finished bulking out. Right now he had traces of baby fat of the sort you saw on raw recruits before basic training blasted away the remaining softness. And the face? John wanted to laugh, imagining Mycroft that young: skin so soft you knew he still only had to shave a time or two a week, freckles like a turkey egg, and hair so red John found himself wondering if even now Mycroft dyed his to a darker rust brown to look more respectable.

He was dressed in fresh new clothes—John could tell from the crisp, smooth finish and the uneasy posture of a boy not at all at ease in his new raiment. He had chinos in navy blue so dark it verged on black, and an only slightly brighter blazer worn over a blazing white polo t-shirt open at the neck to reveal a long Holmesian throat and the tender curves of clavicle. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and he shuffled his feet in flawless new loafers.

He smiled at the boy, and held out his hand. “John Watson,” he said. “Pleased—“

“You cleaned,” Sherlock cut in. It wasn’t a compliment.

“Well, yeah,” John said. “You asked me to.”

“I asked you to get the place read for Mikey to stay,” Sherlock said, sourly. “Push the boxes to the side of the upstairs room. Clear a drawer in the dresser. Make sure there’s a spare tooth brush. I didn’t mean you to clean. If I wanted it clean, I could have _him_ do that.”

John blinked. “Um…”

“He’s not Cinderella, you know,” Mary said, laughing, then smiled at the boy. “Mary—John’s wife. And the baby’s Em.”

He smiled politely, if a bit stiffly, and nodded. “Mi…My. I’m My. My Holmes.”

“Like Mycroft?”

“Shit,” Sherlock said, then glowered at John. “Don’t bring _him_ up.”

The boy went pale, freckles glowing. “I….”

“My, go make tea,” Sherlock said.

My looked around, confused. Lestrade, taking pity, dropped the boxes and bags he was carrying onto the floor, and pointed. “That way—there’s an electric kettle on the counter, or was the last I saw. Mugs in the cupboard by the sink, tea sachets in the first drawer to the left.” As soon as the boy went, Greg glowered. “Didn’t you tell him?”

“He’s not classified high enough.”

“When did that ever matter to you before?”

“Oh, do stop twittering. I’ve kept all the important secrets.”

“What are you on about?” John asked, annoyed. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Sherlock snarled, as Lestrade said at the same moment, “The kid’s Mycroft.”

John blinked, stunned. Mary, always a bit quicker on the uptake, said, “Wait—what? He’s Mycroft?”

“It’s complicated,” Sherlock said, scowling at Lestrade.

“I’ll say,” Lestrade grumbled. “God. I thought you two were bad as adults. It’s a wonder your parents didn’t kill you, Sherlock.”

“What about him? It’s his fault.”

“You know, I really don’t think it is, sunshine…”

“You just like him better than you like me.”

“Sherlock—listen to yourself! For God’s sake, I _know_ My’s eighteen—but what the hell age have _you_ reverted to? Six? Eight?”

“He started it.”

“Sherlock…”

“Well if he weren’t such a stupid, stuffy stick…”

“Sherlock!”

Then the boy was standing in the kitchen doorway, red and miserable, kettle in hand. “Excuse me. But…how do I turn it on? I can’t find the switch.”

“Don’t be so stupid,” Sherlock growled. “Do make an effort.”

“Sherlock,” the other three adults said, all ready to smack their friend by then.

He huffed, rolled his eyes, and shook his head, looking heavenward. “The things I have to do! Fine. Go on, Mikey, I’ll come _show_ you since you can’t work it out for yourself.”

John could see the boy’s face go tight and cold and angry, jaw tight and teeth clenched—an expression he’s seen so often on Mycroft’s face that he knew instantly that Lestrade was telling the perfect truth. Somehow, some way, this boy was Mycroft Holmes at eighteen: gawky, inexperienced, barely even hatched, but still, Mycroft Holmes, with all the brains, deviousness, pride, and peculiar honor he’d learned to associate with the man. Hardly a likeable man—but one who demanded some respect.

Or he would. Someday.

When Sherlock had swanned into the kitchen after the boy, he stalked over to Lestrade. “Explain.”

“Damned if I can,” Lestrade said. “No one can. He just _is._ They found him in a bunker Moriarty’s people were running. That’s all anyone knows.”

“Moriarty.”

“Yeah.”

“And you let him live? You haven’t locked him up? If he’s Moriarty’s he could do anything.”

“He’s just a kid,” Lestrade said, wearily. “Eighteen years old, and God, he’s lost.”

Mary jigged the baby on her hip, studying Lestrade. “Looks like you had a hell of a day.”

“You would not believe.” Lestrade leaned wearily against the door of the flat and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Sherlock’s been like a freaked out border collie all afternoon, yipping and nipping and harrying the kid. I don’t know what’s got into him—it’s like he can’t control himself, he’s so determined to get a rise out of his brother. And the harder he pushes the quieter and tighter and colder the boy gets until he flips and says something that slices like lasers. Just—horrible.”

John thought back to one of his first meetings with Mycroft Holmes. “You can imagine the Christmas dinners,” he said, and shuddered. “God. No. I never wanted to know…”

Mary frowned. “Should we leave them alone?”

“Don’t know what else do to,” Lestrade said. “Sherlock’s supposed to be evaluating him—trying to figure out if he’s a fake or something. That means we can’t split them up.”

“Then…what?”

“Warn Mrs. Hudson?” Mary suggested. “I do think she could probably rein Sherlock in if she had to.”

Before John or Lestrade could respond, there was a squall, and then the sound of a sharp slap—then a sudden scuffle began, fast and furious.

“Shit,” Lestrade said, and stormed for the kitchen.

Later they agreed that, if you had to have Sherlock Holmes and My fighting, it was just as well to have a copper/Mi5 agent, a former Army officer, and a CIA ex-assassin on the premises to break it up….

“No,” John shouted in Sherlock’s face, shoving him onto a kitchen chair. “Sit.”

“He _hit_ me!” Sherlock shouted, face red.

“You hit him, too.”

“He hit me first. He _slapped_  me. On the face.”

John looked. There was the trace of a palm mark over Sherlock’s right cheek. He sighed. “All right. I’ll talk to him. But you stay there.” He crossed the room, joining Lestrade and Mary, who had penned Mycroft in the corner. The tall redhead had gone ice cold and silent.

“Ok,” John said, wearily. “He says you slapped him—and it looks like you did. Got any excuse?”

My met his eyes, chin high, mouth tight. He shrugged. “He’s a pest,” he said, and went silent.

“Pest isn’t good enough,” John said. “You can’t hit people—even people older and bigger than you.”

The eyes went even colder, and sardonic as all hell. “I’ll remember that,” My drawled. “First time anyone ever said that around me.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

“John…” Mary said, voice tense.

“I mean, you can’t go picking on people and get away with it just because you’re littler,” John continued. “Look, mate, I’ve been there. I know it’s easy to go all innocent and pretend it’s not your fault. People think because you’re the little one people must have been picking on you. But you can’t pull that stunt. It’s bullying—even if it doesn’t look like it.”

‘John,” she repeated, tugging his sleeve, “Sweetie, shut up? Please?”

He turned and frowned. “Come on, Mary—you know it as well as I do—look at you. Little tiny thing like you. No one believes you’re the one making trouble.”

“John…” She sighed and looked at My. “My—what did he do to you?”

He scowled and wouldn’t meet her eye. “Nothing.”

“My…”

“Nothing,” he said again, sharply. “He didn’t do anything. Nothing serious. Just went on at me, things like that.”

Lestrade, watching, said, softly, “Take off the blazer.”

My met his eyes, then, where he wouldn’t meet Mary’s. “No.”

John heard the tension in his voice, then, and felt his stomach drop. “My—come on. Blazer off.”

The boy set his teeth, prepared to fight—and then surrendered. He slipped it off.

John flinched.

“It’s nothing,” Mycroft said. “He just pinched me.”

“Yeah,” John said, “but it looks like he knows how to pinch.”

There’s pinching, he thought, and then there’s pinching. Sherlock appeared to have caught a fold of skin between finger and thumb and twisted—hard. Two dark bruises were rising, ringed with hot, feverish-looking red.

“It’s just a pinch,” Sherlock whined from the kitchen chair. “Mycroft _slapped_ me! And then he tried to push me up against the wall.”

John and Mary and Lestrade looked at each other. Mary looked at My, and said, softly, “Is he always like this?”

The boy shrugged. “He’s just a little kid. He’s not responsible. I’m supposed to know better.”

“I told you it was his fault,” Sherlock grumbled, sulking.

“Crap,” John said, and wiped his face in both hands. “Oh, bloody god-damned crap.”

oOo

“Yeah,” Lestrade said over the mobile. “I’m staying over tonight. We’re getting the basement room ready for My—Maybe with a storey between them and Mrs. Hudson keeping watch Sherlock will have a chance to think it through. I don’t think he even really realized what he was doing—he just… I don’t know. Reverted. He had you there just like when he was eleven—and he acted like he was eleven. I don’t think it helped that we all kind of like the kid. You know Sherlock—territorial and jealous to the end. But it was like the St. Stephen’s Day Murders: get family together and watch them all turn into the little brats they used to be. Sorry. We just weren’t ready for it. I don’t think Sherlock was, either.”

“No,” Mycroft said, wearily. “No. I probably should have thought, but it’s been so long since I was eighteen—since he was eleven. It didn’t occur to me that he’s start treating me the way he always did.”

“God, he was a little brat.”

Mycroft made a face. “Don’t feel too sorry for me. I was a brat in my own way. Vain, bossy, and private. A tease—you probably didn’t see that part, because I…because the boy’s off center and afraid right now. But I used to be quite good at taking the mickey out of Sherlock. Taking the piss out. I used to drive him crazy, and he was too young to counter—and the wrong personality entirely to do what I would have done, and simply retreat and go cold. And it drove me mad that he couldn’t keep up with me—not physically, not mentally. I wasn’t always kind.”

“Yeah, wlel—I know Sherlock. I’m willing to bet he was perfectly happy to be not-kind first, and pin the blame on you.”

“Yes. But, truly, it wasn’t one-sided.”

“Your parents didn’t do all that well with you, did they?”

“They expected me to be adult enough to deal with a child seven years my junior. It’s not like I didn’t have the advantage in all respects.”

“Mycroft? Look. You can eat all the guilt you like later. Right now? Put some thought into how you’re going to manage this—because I honestly don’t think Sherlock’s ready to be a big brother, yet—all his habits were built when he was a little brother. A bratty, angry, jealous little brother. The trouble is now he’s decades older, heavier, stronger, trained in martial arts—and he’s got the upper hand. Only his subconscious isn’t factoring any of that in, yet. He needs time…and some kind of buffer zone. You’ve got to figure out how to give him one.”

Mycroft made a face, but nodded, even knowing Lestrade couldn’t see it. “Yes. Fine. You’re right, of course.” He grimaced. “Big Brother to the rescue, I suppose. Thank you for dealing with it, Lestrade—and thank you for staying the night. Having my young self killed might solve any number of our problems, but I must confess I would regret it. If nothing else, until I know how he got here or who he really is, I’d as soon keep him around. He’s living evidence—and I’d like to keep him that way.”

When they’d worked out the specifics for the next day, he hung up, and stretched at his desk, feeling far more tired than the day seemed to warrant. He stared across the room.

Goodness. He’d forgotten how Sherlock could pinch. Half his life before he’d moved away to uni his arms had been covered with bruises—black and blue, plummy purple-red, greenish ones that were fading, pale yellow ones almost gone. Pinches on his arms, kicks on his shins. Never sure whether he could crawl into bed without finding it full of frog spawn or folded up as an apple-pie bed. His favorite books stolen, his tapes used for “pirate rigging,” and nothing he could do about it, because if he told Mummy and Father they said it was normal and that Sherlock loved him and it wall all jealousy and wanting attention, and to play with Sherlock more and that Mycroft was the big brother, and on and on.

And in truth, he loved Sherlock. He always had since they’d put the baby in his arms. Beautiful, mad, sweet, funny Sherlock. An angel. A devil. A brat, a tattle-tale, a tag-along.

He’d forgotten the pinches, though. It had been so many years; years filled with shared missions and foreign operatives and drug overdoses and criminal cases and…

He’d forgotten what it felt like for Sherlock to grab on tight and twist hard—and what it felt like to lose his temper and lash out, only to have Mummy and Father storm in and remind him that he was the oldest. The biggest. That it was his job to take care of Sherlock. That big kids didn’t hit their little brothers…no matter what.

“He hit me first, Mummy,” Sherlock would sob, eyes clear and innocent and blue as a summer lake and dripping tears. “He _hit_ me!”

All the guilt and frustration and misery rolled back, as though the decades had never passed.

Big boys didn’t hit their brothers. After all, it was only teasing—only a pinch. Sherlock just wanted attention—he loved Mycroft.

Big brothers take care of their little brothers. No matter what.

oOo

My walked through the big building DI Lestrade said was where MI6 was headquartered these days, Lestrade pacing along beside him.

He liked DI Lestrade. He liked John and Mary, too—but he felt cautious of them. They were, somehow, Sherlock’s. The big, strong, powerful new Sherlock, who acted like his baby brother, but who fought like ten devils and who seemed to rule all of London—to own it as his own perfect kingdom. A Sherlock who was apparently famous, now.

In comparison My felt so much smaller, and lost.

“We’ve got a half-hour to kill,” Lestrade said. “How about we go to the canteen and grab some coffee and sarnies?”

My nodded, silently, and then followed. DI Lestrade went through the line chatting with the servers, exchanging friendly words with other people in line. At first My thought he must know everyone…then he realized the man knew almost none of them. He just had a way with him—easy and relaxed, smiling. My’s heart beat seeing it. He could never do that. Strangers made him pull into himself like a turtle into his shell…

And now everyone was strange; only Sherlock familiar, and even Sherlock changed.

They sat at a table with a view out over the Thames.

“When did the Ferris wheel go up?” he asked the older man as they ate their sandwiches.

Lestrade frowned, thinking. “Don’t remember when they started building it. Remember when it opened, though: 2000. Millennium. Big deal.”

“Have you been on?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Did you like it?”

He grimaced and grinned at My. “Not much.” He lowered his voice, eyes twinkling. “Don’t tell—but I hate heights.”

My gave a quick, sharp laugh, then smothered it. He managed a little smile, and whispered, “Me, too. Don’t tell?”

“Shared secret,” Lestrade agreed. “Just us two.”

My nodded, and looked back down at his lunch. Now that he was away from Sherlock and John and Mary, he felt a bit less insecure. He liked Lestrade. He almost trusted him. He at least trusted him enough to risk the biggest question of all…

He swallowed another bite of sandwich, then said, softly, “My parents—they’re dead, aren’t they?”

Lestrade stopped, stunned. “Um…I don’t know….” He thought about it, and said, “Here—I can call Sherlock.”

“No!” My ducked his head. “I don’t want him to know I asked.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll know I was…” He stopped.

Lestrade made an odd grumbling noise, and sighed. “Shit. Yeah. Ok, he’ll know you were afraid. And he’ll pick at it, and pick at it, and pick at it, won’t he?”

My nodded.

“Yeah,” Lestrade said. “He’s a bit of a brat.”

“You all like him, though,” My said.

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know him.” Lestrade picked up his drink glass and swirled it around, setting the cola fizzing. “Look—he’s not that bad these days. Not usually. I really think it just threw him. Give him a chance to think it through and I think he’ll be ashamed. OK?”

My nodded, because you always had to nod when people told you about Sherlock—that he was ashamed or that he loved you or that it was just to get attention. There was no real point trying to ask what to do about it, because what it usually boiled down to was “put up with him, don’t fight back, and love him anyway.” He was used to it…and he did love his brother.

He thought back to when Sherlock had been little—only months ago, before he woke up in the little room attended by the stranger scientists. Little Sherlock, who’d follow him through the fields, and help him with biology projects and ask him to tell ghost stories and then run off screaming so loud My could only laugh—and then come back the next night begging for more. He missed that Sherlock terribly, pinches and pouts and tantrums and all…

“Well,” Lestrade said, patting his mouth dry, and gathering up his tray. “Time to go up, then.”

“Who are we going to see,” My asked.

“Someone special,” Lestrade told him. “One of the smartest people I ever met. He pretty much runs all the important things here—he’s one of the planners. One of the best.”

“What’s his name?”

Lestrade met his eyes, and smiled. “I think I’ll let him tell you that,” he said. “I don’t think I’m cleared to pass it on, you see.”

My frowned. “Cleared?”

Lestrade shrugged. “You know something weird has happened, right?”

“Time travel,” My said, soberly, thinking of grown-up Sherlock and Mummy and Father probably dead. It was frightening to think grown-up Sherlock might be his only family, now.

“We don’t know,” Lestrade said. “I mean, I do agree it looks like it. But we really don’t know. We do know something very strange happened, and we don’t know what, or how—but we do know that the people who had you are…well. They’re…they’re the bad guys. All right?”

“Criminals?” My asked, seriously. “Bad guys is sort of baby talk.”

“Criminals, yes,” Lestrade said. “But—Look. The thing is, they’re the kind of criminals even MI5 and MI6 get a bit spooked by, OK? Terrorists, killers. That’s sort of why I say ‘bad guys.’ Because we really just don’t have words big enough, so we might as well use the little ones.”

My felt sick. “Oh.”

“Yeah. So—we would really like to know what happened, and why you’re here, and how they brought you. Right?”

My nodded.

“So—anyway. You’re kind of a big deal. And I’ve probably already told you more than I’m cleared to—but at least now you understand _why_ I have to be cleared. Right?”

My, thinking through all the implications of seriously bad bad guys with time travel shivered and nodded. That was frightening. Really, really frightening. More frightening than thinking he had no family but grown-up Sherlock who hated him.

Lestrade smiled, apologetically. “So—let’s get it over with. I can’t tell you who he is---but he can. So let’s go up and meet him, right?”

My swallowed, rammed down the tension at meeting yet another stranger—this one a really important one—and followed Lestrade to the elevators.

They went up to what almost had to be the very top storey. Then Lestrade led him through a big office filled with the odd, science fiction office equipment like something from Star Trek, or Doctor Who. Then through a smaller office with even fancier equipment presided over by a beautiful woman. Then Lestrade opened one last set of doors, and guided My through into a big office that was all light and shadow and space and mystery, and he looked into the eyes of the man who was master of this place---

And his own eyes looked back, and My wanted to throw up.

The man was old, and balding, and dressed like a cartoon of a toff—the kind of idjit Mummy and Father joked about after county events. He was plain, with a big nose. Worst of all—he was…

Something. It sent shivers down My’s back. He was wrong. He was terrifying. He was creepy. Worst of all—he was My.

He was the man who’d stolen My’s future, eaten up everything My had ever dreamed of being, and turned it into himself.

The man smiled a prissy, tight little smile, eyes cold and distant, and held out his hand.

“I see you’ve already deduced who I am,” he said. “My regrets for our secrecy. Let me welcome you to your future.”

My hated him.

He hated him with all his grieving heart.

This was his future, and he could think of nothing worse.

 

 


	2. The Fugitive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My settles in.

_Can we retrieve him?_

Solange Carlier looked at the screen message. It was from 4$h, her superior—real name and identity unknown, and irrelevant. All that mattered was that, for Solange, 4$h _was_ Moriarty. Possibly the only incarnation of High Moriarty she would ever experience.

She counted herself as Mid-Moriarty. She knew Moriarty’s goals: freedom, justice, equality. She had been let in on the true purpose of Moriarty, unlike the fools down-system at the bottom of Moriarty, who thought it was all a vast, sly joke, a ramped up variant on trolling for lulz.

_What point? He was never anything but data. Why take the risk?_

_That’s not your problem. Can we retrieve him?_

Solange considered. _How much effort are we willing to put out? What resources are we willing to invest?_

_I’ll send you a list. Let me know when you’ve received it._

_No. I’ll let you know when I’ve reviewed it, and the situation. Anything I say before that would be a waste of time._

There was a short lag. Then:   _Agreed._ The connection closed.

Solange began the slow process of checking into her secret accounts, determined that no one, especially the espionage forces of the corporate-owned West, would ever trace even a part of Moriarty’s great work to her.

oOo

Sherlock sprawled in his armchair, in his blue robe, clutching a mug of tea and watching Him, while trying to ignore Lestrade, who was occupying the sofa eating breakfast toast and reading the morning news on one of Sherlock’s tablets.

The Boy—Mike—was in the kitchen getting himself something to eat. John, Mary, and Lestrade had made a rush job of preparing the downstairs flat, getting a bed, armchair, and desk from Ikea, ignoring Sherlock’s loud protests that if they’d just take him along they’d be able to use Mycroft’s credit card to get more and better furniture faster. Indeed, after the fight in the kitchen the first evening they and Mrs. Hudson had done everything they could to make sure that he was never alone with…it. Him.

The thing that could not logically be his brother. “Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, however improbable, must be true.” This could not be Mikey. It looked like Mikey, sounded like Mikey, tripped off all the same feelings Mikey had. It was, he was forced to accept, genetically identical to Mikey. That said, it could not logically actually be his brother—and if it were not his brother, then it combined the worst of all possible truths. It was a fake. It was Moriarty’s fake. And Moriarty’s fake was so convincing it did not just reflect memory, but corrected memory, shaking Sherlock to the hidden core and heart he so often denied.

“What are you making in there?” Lestrade called, looking up from the tablet. “Smells good.”

“Sausage and onion sandwich,” the boy called back. “Do you want one, Inspector?”

So polite. Sherlock sighed, and twitched. So damned “Mikey.” His brother always had been a suck-up, trying too hard to impress and please. “No talking to the kitchen help,” he growled at Lestrade. It made him edgy, the way his friends accepted this forgery so instantly—and liked him. Favored him over Sherlock himself. Hell, even John, who liked Mycroft himself no more than moderately at best, and then only on a good day, seemed to like “Mikey.”

No. It was calling itself “My,” now, thanks to Lestrade, wasn’t it? “My” what? Certainly not my brother, he thought furiously at the boy clattering around. Not anything but my enemy: Moriarty’s tool.

Lestrade, meanwhile, shot Sherlock a dark glance, obviously unhappy at Sherlock’s attempt to distance them from the imposter. “Yeah,” he called to the boy, “sandwich sounds great. Need a hand?”

“If you want coffee you may want to make it yourself,” the fake called back. “I’m afraid I’m rubbish at coffee. If you want tea, though, I’m good.”

“I’ll make coffee,” Sherlock growled, determined to keep Lestrade from bonding any more with the boy than he already had. And he wanted this fake “Mike” to know—no matter how John and Mary and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson ran intervention, he was watched. Sherlock Holmes was watching him. He uncoiled himself from his chair and stalked out to the kitchen, going to rummage in the cupboard for the larger French press, rather than the small one he used to brew himself a cup during the day if he wanted one, rather than tea. He pulled the good beans Mycroft—the real Mycroft—sent him on occasion out of the freezer, and zizzed them to a moderate grind in the coffee mill Mycroft had also sent him.

He smiled, a tight, reminiscent smile, thinking of the gift. Mycroft in his best snoot mode, nose up, mouth all prunes and prisms proper, at his sarky best. “No doubt it will be wasted on you, but there’s a chance your _clients_ might prefer something drinkable. If you must be notorious I would vastly prefer you were not notorious for cheap tastes and poor hospitality. It reflects on me.”

Which was ridiculous, of course. At Mycroft’s level there was very little Sherlock could do that would actually serve to tarnish his brother’s brilliant sheen—not amongst the people who mattered, or who mattered to him. But Mike… _Mycroft_ …wouldn’t be comfortable admitting to humble, human traits like kindness, generosity, or sentiment.

Not that Sherlock would, either.

He risked a sidewise glance at It…just managing to catch It shying away, pretending It hadn’t been giving Sherlock a sidewise glance. It’s face was poker-straight, attempting to give away nothing.

It wasn’t as good at it as Sherlock remembered It…no, It wasn’t as good at hiding It’s feelings as Sherlock remembered _his_ Mike as being. His Mike had been ice and control for as long as Sherlock had known him. He remembered sitting in the kitchen at Mummy and Father’s needling and needling, trying to get Mike to even act like Sherlock was there.

_“Eating again? That’s why you’re so squishy—fat and pink and squishy. You’re going to have to go on a diet, someday. You’re going to be a hundred pounds, pretty soon.”_

_“Sherlock,” Mike said, with a sigh, “most grownups **are** over a hundred pounds. Short, petite ones may weigh less, but I’m almost six feet and still growing…God knows when I’ll stop. Of course I eat—I’m a growing boy. It’s normal.”_

_“You eat like a pig.” Sherlock proceeded to do a fairly skilled imitation of the pigs on the Home Farm, snorting and grunting and making dire guzzling sounds. “Porky-porky Mikey. Ugly ginger fatty-pants.”_

_Mike ignored him, then, proceeding to build a towering ham and mayonaisse and chutney sandwich and pour out a heap of crisps._

_“You should have made me one.”_

_Mike shrugged. “You didn’t ask for one.”_

_“I’m asking now.”_

_“Make your own.”_

_“Mummy will be mad at you. You’re supposed to look after me when she’s in town.”_

_“Make your own, brat. You know how.”_

_“You can’t make me.”_

_“I don’t have to. It’s your stomach.” He poured himself a glass of lemonade, put everything on a tray, and started for the stairs, face impassive and body radiating his complete indifference to obnoxious baby brothers who were starving to death and bored._

_Sherlock stuck out his foot._

_Mycroft went down, all his almost-six-feet crashing heavily on the old stone floor. The tray crashed—the old wood splitting, the plate cracking in two, the glass of lemonade skittering wildly across the floor and the lemonade spurting out like blood at a crime scene._

_“Clumsy,” Sherlock muttered, frowning—knowing he’d gone too far._

_Mycroft sat up, hissing, testing his knees for damage. His face was still….rigid._

_“Are you all right?” Sherlock, too late, felt sudden fear._

_“I don’t know, yet,” Mycroft said. “Go to your room, Sherlock.”_

_It flicked the raw of Sherlock’s ego. “You’re not Mummy. You can’t make me.”_

_“I’m in charge when Mummy’s gone. Go to your room.”_

_“No.”_

_“Sherlock— **now**.”_

_It was the same tone and delivery Mummy used when Sherlock had crossed one line too far—but Mycroft, in Sherlock’s view, had no right to use that voice. Mycroft was just a brother—a snotty, obnoxious, rude, mean brother. “Won’t. Can’t make me.”_

_Mycroft unfolded from the floor, then, one long, lanky installment at a time. His face, still soft with a layer of baby-fat, was statue still. One hand reached out and grabbed Sherlock by the back of the collar. The other grabbed the waistband of his jeans. Far too easily, he picked up his brother, who at ten had not yet started his adolescent growth-spurt. Mycroft was seventeen. He lifted Sherlock, tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and walked gingerly across the wet floor, then up the stairs, with Sherlock kicking and screaming and pinching every bit of soft waistline and sensitive arm he could reach. At the top of the stair he turned, opening the bathroom door, dumping Sherlock unceremoniously inside, and cramming a nearby hall chair under the knob._

_“Let me out! Let me out! I’m telling Mummy you locked me in!”_

_“Do it,” Mike growled. “I’m going down to clean up the mess. I’ll be back when I’m done.”_

_“You have no right!”_

_Mike didn’t reply. Sherlock, scowling, heard his footsteps fade away down the stairs._

_He looked around the bathroom. Boring. Boring, boring, boring._

_Well…he supposed he could play with the water. Or the toothpaste. Or try plugging up the toilet…_

_Then he looked at the window. The unlocked window. He thought about bricks, and the nice little spaces between them. He thought about proving to Mikey that no one—especially not Mikey—could lock him in a bathroom and get away with it._

_It was his third broken bone. Family Services actually came out to see them about it. Sherlock, when asked, cried very nicely, in his own opinion, and said, “It was Mikey’s fault. He didn’t want to watch me, so he picked me up and locked me in the bathroom.”_

_The rest of that afternoon had proved very amusing…_

In retrospect, Sherlock wondered why his parents hadn’t had the sense to realize he’d provoked the entire thing. Or to see that Mike had actually been rather practical in his solution to the situation. After all, while Mike was almost preternaturally good at working out some of the mischief Sherlock could get into, he was not yet half so skilled as he became after uni and MI6 taught him game theory and statistical analysis and far more behavioral science than was remotely decent.

He wondered why Mikey never sat down with anyone and tried to convince them his baby brother was mental and needed a keeper—one who was not named “Mike” or anything even remotely like it. And, yet—

Even when Family Services had come out, he’d looked at the woman and simply said, “I made a mistake. I thought he’d be safe while I cleaned up the mess.” And didn’t say anything more, not even to tell how mean Sherlock had been.

It was the unspoken truth, the undeclared contract.

Big brothers take care of baby brothers. No matter what. They might fight, but that was between them. Otherwise it was them against the world—even against Mummy and Father. Because that was how it was supposed to be…Sherlock had always known it. No matter what, he would always have Mycroft. Mycroft belonged to _him._

He shot an uneasy eye back toward It. It looked back at him, a fast, unsettled glance.

Sherlock compared the thing in his kitchen with the boy in his memory, and found too much newly remembered. Hesitation, helplessness, shy reserve…

“Here,” he said, pulling a stack of dishes from the cupboard. “You can make the sandwiches on these.” He swallowed. “Would…would you mind making one for me?”

The boy looked at him, a faint frown between his brows. Then he nodded, and silently began to lay out slices of bread. “Mayonaisse?”

“Yech. Makes you fat. Chutney.”

The boy looked at him, eyes still. “You always did like chutney,” he said, softly.

Sherlock met his brother’s eyes, and said, quietly. “I know. And you always liked mayonnaise. Fatty.” He risked a tight smile, unsure if he was making peace, or merely pretending so as better to study the enemy.

The enemy smiled back and slathered the chutney on thick and chunky, just the way Sherlock had always liked it.

oOo

It really was Sherlock, My thought, as he made the sandwiches. It really was.

He’d wondered. Even seeing his horrible adult self, so far from anything he’d wanted to become—so disappointing and ghastly. Even seeing him, he’d wondered if this wasn’t some kind of trick. The kind of thing they showed on the telly. Hallucinogens to bend his mind, hypnosis to suggest what to see, actors and sets to make it all seem real.

Of course, logic and deduction had both insisted otherwise. No one was acting. Nothing he could find was false. And, yet, he’d wondered…

But this was Sherlock. Under the grownup gloss, it was his baby brother, unmistakable and sure. The prodding, teasing, spite. The hungry anger when the entire world failed to orbit around him. The tendency to be too clever for his own good. And, yet—

There were those moments when the connection was made, when his baby brother was _his_ baby brother: his to watch over and care for. His to understand, as no one else understood the wretched little brat. His—his Sherlock.

He finished making the sandwiches. “Tray?” he asked.

“Yep,” Sherlock said, sounding just like he had months ago---decades ago—a good hundred pounds lighter and a good two feet shorter. He fished in a cupboard under the counter, and pulled out a worn wood tray with the faint traces of hand-painted roses glowing dim on the battered surface. There was a crack right down the middle, clearly mended long ago.

My traced the crack with gentle fingers, studying the faded flowers and the fine-grained poplar wood. The tray had broken the day Sherlock had fallen climbing out the window of the upstairs WC. After, My had mended it with white glue, tying it together tight with kitchen twine until the glue set hard. It had taken a doctor to fix Sherlock’s arm, though, and the poor brat had itched and whined and ached and carried that heavy cast around for weeks after. My had felt the guilt like fire in his belly.

He knew Sherlock. He knew better than to trust him out of sight. Just because he’d been locked in the loo was no reason to think he wouldn’t get himself in trouble. It’s just My had thought it would be overflowing the bathtub or plugging up the toilet or some other annoying but easily repaired stunt. Not climbing out a too-high, too-small window and trying to scale down the bricks of the old Tudor dower house.

It had been one more lesson learned: you could never be too careful with Sherlock. Never. You could never trust him to stay out of trouble, or hope he’d demonstrate common sense. Not when his ego was on the line. Not when anyone challenged him by insisting on limits or boundaries. Sherlock, bless him, damn him, had no truck with limits or boundaries.

He piled the sandwich plates on the tray, filling it. He looked over at Lestrade, who’d come to lean on the doorframe of the kitchen, arms crossed. “I’ll make a second trip for the tea,” he said. “Or I can get you something else?”

Lestrade smiled at him. “Why don’t you let me take care of drinks?” he said. “I know my way around. Been here often enough.”

Sherlock snorted. “You hardly run tame, here, Lestrade.” He gave a dramatic shudder. “Just having you around thinking at me would destroy my concentration.”

“Sarky bastard,” Lestrade said, chuckling. He gave My another blazing, white-toothed smile, and winked. “Pain in the arse, our Sherlock. Was he like this as a lad?”

My blushed, and felt his heart jounce. No one smiled at him like that. Of course, he hardly knew anyone who might in the first place…. “He likes to tease,” he muttered back, and fled into the sitting room, putting the tray down on the coffee table where they could all get at it. He took a plate and looked around for a place to sit.

There was Sherlock’s chair, but My knew better than to sit there. You couldn’t even sit at Sherlock’s chair at the table back home without Baby Brother acting like all three bears in Goldilocks—all three bears, roaring about all three bowls of porridge, all three chairs, and all three beds, all at once. There was the table-desk—but it was dense with all that terrifying modern Star Trek technology, and My was fairly sure spilling or dribbling crumbs would be unwelcome. There was the sofa—but just thinking of sitting on the sofa, still so clearly Lestrade’s kingdom, with the tea cup and the tablet-thing and the cushion jammed into the corner to brace Lestrade’s back… Well. The thought made him blush. Then there was the other arm chair, where Doctor Watson had sat the times he’d been there.

Doctor Watson wasn’t here, and he didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d begrudge My the use of a chair he wasn’t sitting in. My crossed and began to lower himself into the seat.

“Not there!” Sherlock trumpeted, in full affront. “That’s John’s chair.”

“You let Mycroft—big Mycroft—sit there,” Lestrade said, dry. “It’s not like John needs it.”

“That’s different,” Sherlock growled, though he didn’t attempt to explain why.

Lestrade glanced at My, face wry, and mouthed, “Sherlock!” and shrugged, ruefully.

My gave a crooked smile, and nodded. Yes—Sherlock. Apparently even as an adult he was easier to just work around than to try to change. He looked around for another place to sit, and resigned himself with flustered shyness to the far end of the sofa, as far over as he could get, where the man might not feel My was being pushy or too forward. He sat carefully, feet on the floor, plate on his knees, elbows in, head down and eyes to himself, trying to maintain his mastery of all the confounding rules of “best company behavior.”

Lestrade came out moments later with two mugs. “Yours is tea. That right?”

My nodded, taking the cup, trying to avoid looking up into the man’s eyes.

He’d known for years that he liked the “wrong” people. He didn’t hate himself. He’d read what he could find, discarded half of it as idiotic blather, and concluded from the rest that it was just one more variable in the human spectrum. He was, however, vividly aware of the associated truths: that he would always be at a statistical disadvantage in finding a partner, and at a severe social disadvantage with many who found his natural inclinations perverse and criminally unbalanced.

The truth was he had no idea how one even went about finding a partner, yet. Not even a short-term, one-shot experimental partner. He’d rather hoped going up to uni would resolve that problem, but in the few months he’d been up he’d heard far more jokes about ponces and queers than he’d heard anything that suggested how to find a lover, much less one he could trust to be clean, sane, and even remotely safe to be around. It didn’t help that what he liked did not appear to be standard even for men of his leanings. The beautiful athletes, the clever artists, the sassy actors, the muscle men: they all intimidated him a bit, and uneasily reminded him of Sherlock with their strutting and their show.

He hadn’t realized he might like silver hair and brown eyes and a man too old—but stunningly kind. Steady.

Around Lestrade he felt something he couldn’t quite express—something wonderful and frightening and unnerving and totally unfamiliar. He couldn’t put his finger on it…it wasn’t just desire. It was something specific about the man that tripped off hungers beyond sex, calling up a yearning My couldn’t name.

Lestrade curled back into his place on the sofa, sprawling and at ease, plate in one hand. One leg stretched out in front of him. The other he cocked sidewise, letting it fall bent over the sofa seat. “Good,” he said, biting the sandwich. “Never knew you could cook. I’ll have to give your older self a hard time about it.”

My frowned. “Daresay  he’s forgotten,” he said. “He’ll have servants to cook for him, now.”

Sherlock snorted, and said through a mouthful of bread and sausage, “I think he’s got servants for his servants. Mycroft Holmes, Master of a Million Minions.”

Lestrade chuckled, but said, “Give it a rest, Sherlock. You know he earns the privilege.”

Sherlock grumbled and made baleful faces. My bent over his plate, trying to hide his annoyance and dislike. “He’s a prig,” he muttered.

Sherlock gave a shout of laughter, and looked over at My. “You don’t _like_ Big Brother!”

My gave a tight, uneasy smile back. “Assuming you intend a reference to the government oversight of 1984—no. I don’t like…whatever it is I apparently grew up to become.” He sniffed. “He’s a prat.”

Lestrade studied him, eyes both amused and pensive. “Not what you hoped to become when you grew up?”

My flushed. “I’m grown up now. I’m eighteen, and at uni.”

“Oooooh, sooooo ooooooold,” Sherlock snarked, rolling his eyes. “Ancient. Give it a rest, Mikey, you always did think going up to Oxford turned you into a man—but you didn’t have to shave more than once a week until years later.”

My blushed red and shot the lanky, strange, Sherlock-not-Sherlock a bitter reproach. “Older than you…” He corrected himself. “Older than you _were_.”

“Like that’s saying so much,” Lestrade said, laughter trying to escape, just barely held back. His eyes, however, shone with it. “Gawd. Sherlock’s barely adult now, and he’s almost forty.”

“He’s actually impressed me,” My said, feeling his own Big Brother tendencies trip off. “A private detective, and a famous one—far better than the pirate he always threatened to become.” He risked a laughing glance at his brother, who echoed back the sweeter moments of their childhood by sticking out his tongue but grinning fondly as he did so. Still, he had to correct My…

“Consulting detective. The first.”

“You used to say ‘only,’” Lestrade  said, finishing his sandwich.

“Now there are copy cats,” Sherlock sniffed.

My studied him…and sighed. His brother had grown up to be so much more interesting—so much more beautiful and vivid and romantic—than My apparently had. Quite dashing, really.

“Maybe I’ll be one,” he said. “A copy cat. If I can’t go back, I mean. I always was better at deductions. I ought to be good at detecting.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and the goodwill faded in an instant. “Don’t be stupid. You’re too lazy to be a _real_ detective. Talk to Big Brother and get him to train you to boss minions around. It’s all you’re any good for…”

“Sherlock…” Lestrade’s voice was tense and warning. “Stuff it.” He looked apologetically at My. “He’s territorial. Gets jealous. Me, I think you’d be good. Nice to have a consulting who’s got a steady head on his shoulders.” He flashed that smile again.

Everything fell apart, then. Sherlock’s temper blew, and he said, “Stop flirting with him, Lestrade. He’ll just take it seriously, and then you’ll have the Queen of Denial following you around all Bambi-eyed. You should have seen him when he got his first crush on his Maths tutor, second year at uni. It was disgusting.”

Lestrade frowned, and was about to cut back with something when My’s own temper blew.

“Oh, well played,” he snarled. “Brat forever. You do realize that holding me accountable for an affection I’ve not yet experienced—and likely won’t if I’m stuck here for good—is hardly logical. Not that you ever were much good at logic. You got the curls, but I got the brains.”

“Just as well,” Sherlock hissed. “Otherwise you’d be losing those early, too. Take a long look at that ginger mess on your head while you can, brother-dear—it won’t last long.”

Then Lestrade rose, setting the plate down on the sofa and starting for the door, saying, “Come on, My—Sherlock’s nap time. Baby Brother’s tired and cranky.” My, at the same moment, rose to escape, embarrassment and anger threatening to humiliate him in front of his too-old, but still too-young brother and the unsettlingly appealing older man who was his friend. Each angled differently across the room, Lestrade aligning himself for the door, My heading for the kitchen.

And then there was a crack from downstairs—a loud noise My couldn’t recognize—and a thunder of feet roaring up the stairs.

Sherlock boiled up out of his chair, dressing gown flapping, shouting “Vatican Cameos!”

Lestrade, mere seconds behind, swung toward the door, pushing My behind him.

The door burst in, and for the second time in less than a week armed men boiled forward, heading for My.

This time My set himself, ready to fight.

Sherlock looked over his shoulder. “Run—my room. Lock it and—“

One of the attackers took advantage of his distraction, and swung the heavy grip of his weapon against Sherlock’s temple. Sherlock tumbled, limp.

My’s guts scrambled, and he threw himself over the tangled, leggy form, temper incandescent as he glared at the attackers. “Leave him alone.”

“Shit,” Lestrade was murmuring. My saw one hand dart into a pocket, do something, then come back out. The older man, seeming in My’s eyes to shine with angel-fire, stepped forward, placing himself between the attackers and the two brothers. “Give it up,” he said in a steady, wary voice. “There’s already help on the way—and you won’t like what’s coming.”

“Get the boy,” one of the attackers said, fiercely.

“How?” another asked.

“Shoot the one, grab the other, leave the guy down behind,” the first snapped. “We have to go.”

Two attackers moved forward. Lestrade prepared to fight. My, unnoticed for the moment, braced himself, determined to do his share. The legs, he thought—he could launch himself at their knees, tackle them like a rugby player bringing down a ball-carrier.

Then everything was motion, and gunshots, and terror.

My went for the knees. Someone fell over him, but he wasn’t sure who. Someone shot. Someone screamed. Someone seemed to arch over him, arms going around him and holding him tight. He didn’t know whether to fight or not—he settled for going hedgehog, protecting his stomach and face, trying to make himself as difficult to grab or carry as possible.

“Stay still—Mycroft’s people are here,” a voice said, low and soft—

My nodded, terrified and gratified at the same time. Lestrade’s hands were around his wrists, trying to make sure he didn’t panic or strike out. He gripped the man’s hands back, clinging tight, feeling the strength in those fingers, the steadiness in the man curved over him. “Yeah,” he managed to say. “Yeah, Ok.”

Something hurt, he thought.

His leg. His leg hurt, he thought.

Around him there was a churning, racing stir of action. A woman’s voice barked orders. People swore. Then, amazingly, miraculously, the flat began to empty out again. Over him, Lestrade rose, then squatted beside him, reaching out to take one of his hands again.

“Hey, kid. You did good. You all right?”

He looked up into those brown eyes—soft, kind, caring. “I—my leg. I think I must have scraped something going down.”

Lestrade frowned. “Ok. Let’s get a look.” He helped My uncoil, one hand steadying him as he unwound his legs and settled with his back against the side of Doctor Watson’s armchair. Once both legs were out, though, he swore. The dark navy leg of his chino trousers was soaked and black.

“Ants, we need a medic. My’s shot.”

My looked at his leg, and frowned. “Oh,” he said, feeling oddly bleary. “Oh. Is that what it is?”

Lestrade snorted, and smiled. “Yeah, kid. That’s what it is.” He reached up and grabbed the soft blanket from the back of the chair, pulling it down. “Lean forward, kid. That’s right, let me get this around you.” He turned back to the room at large. “Medic fast, Ants—he’s going into shock.”

“Oh,” My said, muddled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

Lestrade laughed, and pulled My close, wrapping him tight. “That’s all right, kid. You just lean on me. You’re going to be fine.”

My leaned back, feeling a solid chest, strong arms, feeling the kindness.

He knew what he felt with Lestrade now, that he’d never felt before. Not sex, or charisma, or infatuation…

He felt protected and safe. Even with Mummy and Father, he thought, as his mind went fuzzy, he had never, never felt protected or safe—and now?

For the first time ever, he did.

oOo

“Bugger.” Mycroft Holmes, headed across town already to review the aftermath of the attack on Sherlock’s flat, swore softly as he got yet another text from Anthea.

_Substantial bleeding from Little M’s leg wound. Taking him to medic at the safe house under M. Tussaud’s—close and easy. Sherlock has called in Dr. Watson. Expect both circus and monkeys._

“Damn,” he said, frustrated. He considered a reply—text or voice, either would have let him vent his feelings somewhat—but decided his right-hand woman had enough to do for the moment. He tapped the glass between the passenger cab and the front of the limo, and when it rolled down gave the address of the museum.

That was both the advantage and the drawback of safe houses associated with public attractions. It was comparatively easy to come and go unnoticed—but, then, you had to endure looking like the kind of person who willingly went to a wax museum…

Ah, well. Needs must when the devil drives.

He opened up a line and called his intake officer. “You’ve got the prisoners?”

“Yes, sir. Safe and sound and waiting for you to have a little word with them.”

“Good. Any progress in identifying them?”

“One, yeah: student at University of London. Stupid enough to come on a snatch carrying his student ID. Keeps crying and saying it was supposed to be ‘laughs and lulz.’ Not sure how one this stupid got into uni, to tell the truth. The other two, though, are tight as clams, and so far no identification made. I’m guessing at least one’s pro.”

“Very well. Continue to keep them under observation, and let me know if you learn anything more concrete. I’m off to see how my…brothers..are doing.” He closed the phone, put it away in his coat pocket, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

An attack. An attempt to recover the…what? Clone? Copy? Forgery? To take back whatever the boy claiming to be Mycroft Holmes really was.

He reviewed all he knew: the top secret, guarded bunker, so carefully hidden, so carefully guarded, so dense with expensive equipment, much of it yet unexplained…all, as near as anyone could determine, to contain one soft, inexperienced boy just barely across the line between childhood and adulthood. He remembered just how green and raw and ill-prepared he’d been at the same age. A fool—an idiot. A romantic infant with dreams of service, hopes for love—if not the marriage-and-children, picket-fence, rambling-rose-in-the-front-garden love his straight peers might hope for.

The boy appeared to be a year sort of the first contact MI6 made with Mycroft. More years before he’d gone for full training. He remembered the ache of hand-to-hand training—and the greater ache of the first relationship that fell apart under the strain of his profession.

This boy had not yet even started the long, painful process of understanding just how vulnerable love and companionship could leave you.

The limo pulled up at the curb in front of the museum. Mycroft got out, leaving instructions to come for him if called, then primly walked up to the front entrance, purchasing a single pass. Once inside, he trailed along until he reached a hidden door that led to an elevator down into the sub-sub basement, far below Madame Tussaud’s workshops.

He stalked out, donw the corridor, and to the small emergency medic station they maintained in the safe house.

Sherlock, of course, was in the center of everything, with a big, square sticking plaster on one temple, the start of a black eye on the same side, and a temper that would shame a rabid badger.

“I thought you said you were keeping us under watch!” he snarled.

“I was,” Mycroft snapped back. “If I hadn’t been you would not have had backup so quickly. The only way it would be faster is if you’d let me quarter some of my team in 221B with you.”

“You’ve already stuck me with the freak. And thanks to him half my associates are insisting on playing chaperone, because they have yet to realize the ‘sweet widdle bubeh boy’ is really _you_ , and can take down empires with one devious play.”

“Thus explaining why he was nearly kidnapped and was in fact fairly seriously injured—protecting _you,_ as I understand.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed—well, of course they did. Baby Brother had fallen, only to have My protect him. No wonder he was in a temper. He glared at Mycroft. “He only did it to show off to Lestrade. You want to watch out, there—as an adult you’re smart enough to leave _my handler_ alone. This one’s all gone marshmallow and cream puffs over him, though.”

Mycroft fought back a flinch, determined to show no sign Sherlock had struck his target. He had thought he’d done a better job at hiding his attraction to the Met/MI5 liaison. That he'd done well enough that even Sherlock had failed to realize.

Maybe. Maybe not. Sherlock might just be venting spleen and throwing accusations in the hopes of hitting something. Even if Sherlock did know, Mycroft was certain he’d not given his vulnerability away to Lestrade—the man was at ease and comfortable in ways that suggested the connection had never occurred to him.

Rather than continue on this thread of dialog, he changed topic. “I’ve had word from my containment manager. Two mystery assailants—we think pros. The third, though, was apparently a complete amateur. U-London student. Not, apparently, at all aware of the seriousness of the intended action. Singing like a canary—unfortunately apparently as empty headed as a canary, too.

Sherlock nodded. “Probably low-level recruit. It fits the pattern we expected.”

Mycroft agreed, grimly. “Yes. Though I am still not sure what one can do to counteract an organization patterned on the best of the old terrorist cells modified by a blanket recruiting system based on an Anonymous-style internet movement.”

“There must be something.”

“Unfortunately, logic does not demand there be a pratical solution to every problem, or the poet would be correct and ‘Death would have no dominion.’ Some problems are insoluble and intractable.”

Sherlock shrugged and looked away. “Yeah-well.” He tossed off a snarky, sardonic little smile. “Shit happens, brother-mine. Read ‘em and weep.”

“You won’t be so flip when you see the results of not solving this problem,” Mycroft said, voice subtle and deadly. “It has been several hundred years since Western humanity faced true helplessness in the face of the forces of darkness. The Huns are at the gates of Rome, Sherlock. The Mongols are attacking Moscow—and this time Moscow will not be the final limit of the conquest.”

“Blah-blah-blah,” Sherlock drawled. “Be honest—in the end we’d just be swapping one set of tyrants for another. You and yours haven’t done so well, have you?”

Mycroft bit back his anger, and said, softly, “If you wish to change allegiances…”

Sherlock’s blue eyes raged, then, and he looked away, sulking. “Go check on the Thing,” he said. “Last I saw he was doing everything he could to make time with _my DI_. I’d appreciate it if you’d call him off. I much prefer neither of you meddle with my friends.”

Mycroft studied him. “Is he so horrible, then, brother? He seemed—“ he stopped and drew an uneasy, shaken breath. He tried again. “He has reminded me quite unpleasantly of why no sane person ever wishes to be ‘young’ again.” The distaste oozed off the word, giving away his insecurity far too clearly.

Sherlock’s mouth twitched up at one corner. “Don’t like to be reminded that once you were merely mortal?”

Mycroft huffed. “I worked hard to attain my current skills and control. Seeing the raw material? No. I’d much rather not.”

“You can leave him to Lestrade, then,” Sherlock said, with bright and false cheer. “He’s proving far too willing to play guardian angel—as are John and Mary and Mrs. Hudson. Who knew your larval stage would appeal to so many otherwise sane adults? It must be some kind of subliminal urge—like bees feeding royal jelly to the queen grub.”

“Quality will out,” Mycroft smirked, and swanned out of the room quickly, before Sherlock could come up with a better comeback.

Lestrade and the boy were in the next room. The boy was asleep, lying on a hospital bed with a rather horrid looking institutional pillow and with a blanket Mycroft remembered from Sherlock’s flat clutched tight at his chest with one hand. The other hand hung over the edge of the bed, and it clung to Lestrade’s.

Lestrade sat in a painfully uncomfortable looking straight-backed chair beside the bed. He’d turned it to lean against the wall at the top of the bed, and he’d tipped his head back against the slick enamel paint. His eyes were shut. One hand held the boy’s hand. The other sheltered it over, as though keeping it safe.

Mycroft felt something ache inside, and refused to ask himself what. He was not allowed aches….especially sentimental, forlorn aches all tied up with envy of his own younger self. He cleared his throat, sharply, and was relieved when Lestrade’s eyes snapped open instantly, and he looked across the room at Mycroft.

Mycroft arched his brows, and gave a small jerk of his head, indicating the other man should join him in the corridor.

Lestrade nodded, and rose, carefully and gently slipping his fingers free from the boy’s clutch, then setting his hand softly on the mattress. He walked on cat feet, and the two men eased their way out of the room, closing the door behind them.

“He’s going to be all right?” Mycroft asked.

“Scarring. May be some long-term muscle damage in the calf. Hit an artery. Nicked tendon, too. He’ll need some physio to get anywhere near the same mobility. Otherwise, though, yeah—he’ll be fine. Right now he’s out cold under the sedative. They had to do some reconstructive work. John says he came through great, though.”

Mycroft nodded. “I understand he resisted being taken.”

Lestrade shrugged. “I can’t comment on that. In my opinion what he resisted was anyone hurting Sherlock. One of the team clipped him upside the head and he went down like a puppet with its strings cut. The next thing I knew My was over him snarling like a Momma cat facing down an entire hunt pack.” He cocked his head and looked at Mcyroft with a fondness that sent shivers up the MI6 agent’s spine. “Now I know that protective streak goes all the way back, and it’s not just ‘duty to Queen and Crown.’ Quite the little tiger, you were.”

Mycroft took the slow, deep breath he knew held blushes at bay, and forced himself to relax. “I was oldest,” he said, simply. “One has obligations.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was there any sign he was prepared for the attack? Or that he attempted to exchange any information with the kidnappers?”

“Do you count, ‘Leave Sherlock alone’? With fangs showing? Because other than that? No. Oh, and non-verbal. He’s steady, by the way—went for the knees, brought two down so near as I can recall.”

Mycroft sniffed, but felt a flutter of satisfaction. In truth he would not have been sure his younger self would have been that capable and determined at that age, without training…

Which, he supposed wearily, was another thing that might prove to be a clue, rather than a reassuring sop to his vanity.

Well. They’d find out, eventually. In the meantime…

“Thank you—for protecting both my brother and my…whatever he is. This would not have turned out well without you.”

Lestrade shrugged. “Yeah. But they did their bit, too.”

“Nonetheless.” Mycroft fixed his eyes on the far end of the corridor. “I’m glad you’re getting on well with the boy. It makes it easier to keep him secure. With you permission I’m going to arrange for you to be seconded fully—no Met duties for now. I need you where you are.”

“Thought maybe,” Lestrade said.

“Be aware, Sherlock’s noted that you like the boy. He’s jealous.”

“He’s Sherlock. I’m used to it.”

“He thinks…he thinks the boy is a bit smitten with you.” Mycroft continued to keep his breathing steady and calm, his eyes on the far wall. “Speaking from my own experience at that age, it is possible he is correct. My first major, er, infatuation was with my Maths tutor at uni when I was only a year or so older than he is now. He was…kind. Perhaps the first man I felt to be truly aware of me as an individual. The first I felt cared for me to any great degree. It was quite overwhelming at the time.”

“First love is. My own was Suzzie Jones, at the sweet shop. Granted, I was a bit younger than My. But, then, I was always a sucker for a pretty face and free lemon drops.”

“Fortunately one grows out of one’s weaknesses,” Mycroft said, firmly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lestrade said with a huge grin. “You don’t know what I’ll do if you offer me a lemon sweetie, now, do you?”

Even breath tricks weren’t enough. Mycroft felt himself blush crimson, and fled.

Really, he thought, as his driver returned him to the Diogenes, the man was a terror. One could hardly blame the boy for being smitten.

oOo

 _Mission was a success,_ Solange typed. _Resources have penetrated MI6. Contact with mole expected at any time. Will relay information as soon as contact is made._

 _Brilliant,_ 4$h texted back. _Operation Wiggins under way._


	3. The Once and Future Mycroft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And--things happen apace. Please note--My's view of his own childhood, and his sense that his parents were not "bad" parents, while at the same time presenting them as being quite unaware of what they "should" have seen is the complex presentation of a boy trying to balance fairness with subjective truth. 
> 
> My felt insecure--but his parents did not fail to love or protect him to the best of their ability. There is just so much we parents can't protect our children from, including from their own fears and uncertainties.

John sat in the little staff lounge of the safe-house under Madame Tussaud’s, drinking a cup of surprisingly good coffee with the surgical team that had provided care for Little My…as John thought of him. It was a comfortable, companionable feeling. He didn’t get much contact with serious combat surgeons these days.

“Nice, neat work,” he said to the lead surgeon. “Should heal up well, barring complications.”

“He’s young,” the woman said. “I think he’ll be all right.” She gave John a considering glance, and then said, cautiously, “So. He’s…interesting. The boy. I don’t know if you know it, but he’s a ringer for…”

“Yeah,” John cut her off. “Mycroft Holmes. Some kind of relation, I think.” Which was all he felt safe saying—God knew what the kid really was.

“Has anyone told you that you lie badly?” the surgeon asked.

“Not lying!”

“All right—telling a cover story.”

“It’s true—so far as I know. Relative of some sort.”

She nodded. “All right, all right. Whatever you say. So—you know Mr. Holmes?”

John considered the question and fought down hysterical dark laughter—dark as any he’d laughed back in the days of frantic surgery on raw young soldiers posted far, far from their homes.

“Know?” He shook his head, then took another long, deep draught of his coffee. “If anyone actually knows Mycroft Holmes, other than maybe Sherlock, it’s a secret from me. Frankly I’d be surprised if God had the inside track on that one. Why?”

“Not every day I come in contact with the high and the mighty. _Or_ anyone who’s familiar with ‘em.” She smiled and said, “Curiosity got the better of me. He’s a legend…and just about as intangible and mysterious as a legend, too. Like Shangri La. How could I resist asking?”

John nearly exhaled coffee. “Mycroft? Shangri La?” He giggled—the hiccupping schoolboy laughter that took him sometimes around Sherlock. “Nothing so romantic. Bit of a prat, in my opinion.”

The response on the part of the surgical team was ill-suppressed irony. The anesthesiologist, a man whose own military background radiated from him, making John feel all the more comfortable and at ease, snorted. “Holmes may not seem all that exotic and magical in person,” he said, “but we’ve seen him pull miracles like a stage magician pulls silk handkerchiefs out of his sleeve—they just keep coming and coming until you wonder if there’s a hole drilled in the stage feeding them up through his trouser-leg. Man like that—he’s got to be special somehow.”

“His brother, yeah. Sherlock’s something completely unique. Mycroft may be brilliant, but he’s not…” John shrugged and made a face, unsure how to express the difference between his fascinating, maddening, enchanting, charismatic friend and the stick in the three-piece who was his brother. “Mycroft may pull miracles—but he’s about as interesting as the guy on the telly who does the financial breakdown, you know? Or he could read the Shipping Forecast—good way to go to sleep, you know?” He sipped his coffee again, then added, “If you want to actually see him, look sharp. He’s likely as not going to be on the premises to check on the boy later.”

The team murmured surprise. The anesthesiologist’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Serious?”

“Yeah, serious,” John said. “He’s interested, you know? And someone tried to kidnap the boy—and conked Sherlock over the head. Mycroft’s never happy when anyone hurts Sherlock. So, yeah, he’ll be here.”

The surgeon stood, rinsed out her mug, put it on the counter, and gave a polite nod. “In that case I’m out of here and planning on staking out the nurse’s station. Probably the best place to get a view.

“Mind if I join you?” the surgical nurse asked.

“Be my guest.”

The two left, leaning together and giggling like fangirls headed out to watch a favorite star in concert.

John shook his head. “Incredible. They’re going to be disappointed, you know. Six-foot-something of prissy little twat all decked out in a bespoke three-piece. The poor man’s Bertie Wooster…only not half so funny.”

The anesthesiologist stood, too, and took care of his own mug. “Must be more to him somehow, blud.” He made a whole-body gesture that took in the entire safe-house and beyond. “Runs all this and more, yeah?”

“Bureaucratic genius I probably have to grant him,” John said, reluctantly. “Still not half what Sherlock is. Not when you strip away the superficials.”

The anesthesiologist gave him an amused smile. “Well, you’re loyal. I’ll give you that. No patience with government bumf, though?”

“Less than none,” John said. “Had more than enough in the service, and it served a purpose there. On Civvy Street too much of it is there to make some drone feel good about himself.”

The man cocked his head. “You think?”

“Pretty damned obvious,” John said, with a sigh, thinking of too many hours with Ella just because someone thought “talking” changed a damned thing. Thinking of the gun he was trained to use, that he had to hide because no one wanted him to use it any more. For that matter, thinking of a world where Mycroft Holmes outranked Sherlock—who, granted, was a complete wanking nutter, but a brilliant complete wanking nutter. John had never been as convinced that Mycroft was, no matter whether Sherlock said he was or not. Sherlock’s relationship with Mycroft puzzled John… “Don’t listen to me, mate,” he added, “I just haven’t much patience with bureaucrats, and that’s it. As our Yank friends say, ‘All hat, no cattle.’”

“Do you ever wish it were different?” the anesthesiologist said.

“Different how?”

“Brilliance and real concern for the common good—both combined. All the advantages of a true democracy—all the effectiveness of an old-style monarchy. Direct action in response to direct problems.”

“Who doesn’t?”

The anesthesiologist smiled. “You’d be surprised. Here, hang on—let me write down a URL for you. Got something you may be interested in.” He found a pad of paper in one of the drawers of the kitchenette, pulled a pen from his pocket, and scribbled a moment before ripping off the page, folding it, and handing it to John. “It’s nothing much. Just an internet activist group. But—you might find it interesting, yeah?”

John didn’t even think twice. He took it, smiled, and shoved it into his pocket. “Yeah, thanks. No idea if I’ll have time. Between work at the clinic and Sherlock running me around like a rookie in basic I don’t have much time online, and what I do have is usually focused on the blog.”

“No worries,” the man said. “Just something to think about.” He nodded, then, and slipped out.

John made his own way down the hall to find Sherlock, who was tormenting a nurse for no reason that was immediately obvious, besides ill-humor and boredom.

“Hey, Sherlock, let her be,” he said, firmly. “I’d like to get out of here, if it’s possible.”

“Mycroft wants me to spend the night,” Sherlock said, then gave a chipper, false smile. “So of course—let me grab the Belstaff and we’ll be on our way.”

John grinned to himself. “Not planning on cooperating, then, are we?”

“All cooperation has got me is an unwelcome house guest, Lestrade playing mother-hen to said house guest, and far too much exposure to Mycroft,” Sherlock said, donning his trademark coat with a swirl of flying skirts. “So, no. I think we’re going to Angelo’s to pick up take-out, and then back to Mary and the baby.”

“Not home to Baker Street?”

“Not until the doors are replaced.” Sherlock scowled. “Big Brother better include that in expenses. I’m certainly not paying for it.”

“Your costs are already on his ticket, aren’t they?” John asked, having long since come to the conclusion that money matters had to be handled by the elder Holmes brother, as Sherlock was far too erratic to be counted on for rent and daily costs.

Sherlock grumbled. “It’s called _salary_. Payment for services rendered.”

“Uh….huh. Yeah. Ok, Sherlock. Whatever. Angelo’s, then home to Mary. Works for me. Let me take one last look at the kid, and then we’re out of here.”

Sherlock scowled. “You, too. Really, I can’t imagine what all of you see in him. Mycroft certainly wasn’t this popular the first time he was this age.”

John chuckled, pacing down the hall toward the boy’s room. “Yeah, well. How many adults did you see him with?”

“My parents.”

“And?”

Sherlock looked at John and frowned. “And what? I saw Mycroft with my parents. Oh, and the occasional doctor or representative of Family Services. A few teachers. I can’t say they usually cared much about Mycroft, though. I was by far the more interesting.”

He was by far the more melodramatic, John thought with a smile. “Yeah. Ok. I get the picture. Look at it this way—he’s the baby in the family now, and everyone likes a sweet, well-behaved baby, right?”

Sherlock sniffed, and wouldn’t talk to John directly again until the dinner from Angelo’s was all gone, and Baby Em was in her cot, sleeping. Until then he restricted his conversation to Mary. Only late, before sprawling across the sofa in the sitting room for the night, did he say, uneasily, “I like him.”

“Huh?” John asked, checking the front door lock and turning off the lights.

“The boy. My. I like him, too.”

“Good,” John said. “This is…good. I mean, well. Yeah. He’s your brother. So it’s all good. Isn’t it?”

Sherlock was silent, then said, “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know? Whether he’s your brother? Or whether it’s good that you like it?”

“Both,” Sherlock said, then pulled the spare blanket up over his shoulder and closed his eyes and said nothing more.

oOo

  
Lestrade curled into the little window seat in the front bay window of his sitting room—one storey up from the ground floor in his building. The lights were off; he had music on the sound system. He’d changed into slouchy, worn running pants and a soft T after showering, and he was nursing a beer. He looked out over the lit streets, unwinding.

The kid, he thought, was something else. Fascinating—a window into so many things he’d wondered about Sherlock and Mycroft over the years…going on over a decade, now. He’d always suspected that the “real” Mycroft Holmes was the protective older brother, and he’d wondered often where the whole “Ice Man” demeanor came from. Meeting the shy, reserved boy—and then seeing Sherlock revert—well…

That and knowing what Mycroft’s job entailed seemed to explain everything well enough. A quiet kid completely convinced it was his obligation to give care, rather than to be cared for…and apparently a world only too willing to accept that arrangement. Which, given Sherlock, was probably understandable enough. What parent wouldn’t be desperate for a bit of help from the older kid, given a handful like Sherlock? Lestrade’s family wasn’t large, but it was large enough that his big sister had looked after him a time or two, and he’d looked after his baby brother in his turn. But neither of them were Sherlock—and Mum and Da had been careful not to ask too much. Of course, they’d been closer than a seven-year-gap…

No matter what, he looked at the kid and it was like seeing all the way into parts of Sherlock and Mycroft both men had kept deeply hidden. The view was staggering—and, oddly, touching.

Nice kid, in a prim, shy, unpolished sort of way. It brought out the paternal in him, much as his Met team did. Much as Sherlock and John did. Only more so…God the kid was young.

Which did leave him with the question of what to do with that blazing torch the boy was carrying…

The look in the boy’s eyes on the ambulance ride over had been enough to start a fire in response, if Lestrade had been at all inclined to the peanut gallery…

As it was, he’d never been drawn to the pretty young men. If he wanted that, give him a pretty young woman, any day. Even then…

There was something about adulthood that drew him—the look in a woman’s eyes when she’d been around the block and knew what she liked—and she liked him. The look in a man’s eyes that said he’d had time to fail a time or two and climb back up in the saddle. He liked women. He liked men.

The boys and girls could make eyes at each other.

But that left him with the poor, sweet kid, who fascinated him regardless. And on top of it, who needed guarding, because someone somewhere was using him as a pawn in a game far too big and far too dangerous for him to handle alone.

He leaned back, then still staring out the window, half-hidden by the drapes. He took a pull on the beer.

Bellow, at the corner of the building kitty-corner across the way, a figure stood, not quite hidden by the turn into the alley beyond. He’d been there too long…and he kept looking up at Greg’s windows.

Greg took another pull at the beer.

This, he thought, was going to be complicated.

oOo

The collection cart rumbled and rattled its way down the corridors far under Baskerville, where the dangerous captives were held. It stopped at each little, secure cell. The private who’d been assigned the detail collected the trays and plates at each one, piling them in order on the cart. He’d been told that each tray, each plate, was inspected, just in case. It was important to know if the prisoners were eating. It was important to know if they were trying to send messages.

It was just important. That was all he needed to know. So he picked up each tray and piled it on the cart, setting it on the shelf-space marked with the cell number in the kind of enamel paint used on model air planes. Cf-40. Cg-42. Ch-44. He collected the even numbers first, then went down the other side of the corridor and collected the odd numbers, stacking them on the other side of the shelves. Ch-43. Cg-41. Cf-39.

When he was done he rolled the entire thing down another corridor to the big cargo elevator at the back of the division, and punched the buttons, ascending into the kitchens far above. The elevator pinged. The elevator door opened. He pushed it out, and over to the receiving station, where a trim man with a major’s insignia took delivery.

The private had no idea why it took a major to accept delivery on dirty dishes. He wasn’t planning on arguing.

The major pushed the cart back to the work room, and began the process of removing one tray at a time from the cart. He examined each one carefully, checking every inch and taking notes on the preset forms provided by his superiors. Each time he marked the bottom, “Clear—no alteration,” then gathered up the tray and dishes and moved them to another cart, this one far less elaborate; a cart entirely lacking the little enamel numbers connecting the trays and dishes with the cells far bellow, and with the prisoners contained in those cells. The only connection left would be found in the forms, and in the video monitoring of the room as the major checked each one.

Cf-39. Clear—no alteration.

Cg-41. Clear—no alteration.

Ch-43. Clear—no alteration.

Ch-44. Clear—no alteration.

Cg-42. Clear—no alteration.

Cf—40. Clear—no alteration.

It was a carefully managed system, with precise methods to ensure that everything was done as it should be. The major was systematic—later inspection of his manner and method would show only the careful labor of a loyal man. The trouble is, the record lied.

So did the major.

Cf-42, he thought, memorizing silently as he proceeded with his work. Six sets of lines scraped in the upper right hand corner of the aluminum tray, just where he’d been told to check.

Later that night, online, he logged onto Reddit and left a message for a friend.

“Hey, Mairzy--IOU £49. Payment following. You accept Paypal?”

In Paris, Solange caught the post, and sent an IM to another friend. “Mad for any sign of hope. Down to reading my tarot cards and tossing coins. Today I came up with the 49th hexagram. Think I should risk going to the club, look for new meat?”

Her friend, astute, smiled, and sent a message to another friend. “Gig’s on. Expect word from Anjou soon. Revolution is under way.”

Her friend proceeded to check the roster of available dupes, and arranged for the first bomb to go off in Paddington station the next morning at 7:45, just in time for the rush hour traffic.

The casualty count was catastrophic.

As MI6s anti-terrorist teams swarmed the bomb site, and Mycroft Holmes observed through a dozen carefully placed cameras, Moriarty watched with him, studying his every choice, reducing it to code, and entering it into the system.

Operation Wiggins was a go.

Still, it would be better if they could retrieve the lost data pack. Moriarty hated giving his opponents a clue, if it could be avoided—and the boy was such a big clue.

oOo

My lay on the bed, alone, his leg aching so badly he had to fight back tears. Lestrade had gone. Sherlock was gone. John Watson was gone. He was alone, and in pain, and he didn’t know what to do.

He was trapped underground again, in a place not that different from the bunker he’d been imprisoned in for months before. He’d hated it. It had been boring—so boring he’d wanted to imitate Sherlock, and kick his feet and stomp and cry and scream how dull everything was.

The only thing interesting had been the games. They’d put him at work station with a comfortingly familiar monitor and keyboard and mouse, and they’d let him play games. Strategy games, tactical games, war games, logic games—

He thought there was a computer on the other side, playing the opposition, but it was a sophisticated program. He’d been paying attention, and so far as he knew no computer had yet won even a simple chess match against serious competition.* This program was far more difficult—it won far more often than My thought it should.

Still, it didn’t win as often as My did.

Between games, there were the psych tests. Hours and hours of word games, thought problems, moral evaluations, image association tests. Endless. Pointless.

Then sleep. Then meals. Then they’d let him swim in the pool, guarded by men and women in hospital scrubs, wearing trainers and carrying guns.

At least so far he hadn’t been asked to play a game, or take a word association test, he thought, and reached down to try to rub the muscles around his wound, hoping to loosen up the slowly tightening, cramped flesh.

It hurt. Oh, God, but it hurt.

He forced himself to stand, and hopped one-legged to the door. He cracked it open.

A guard looked in. “Yeah?”

“I—is there a doctor? Or a nurse? I…it hurts.”

The man blinked, then nodded. “Yeah, sure, kid. Just a moment.” He pulled a communication device off his belt, and said, “Hey, Anthea—kid’s woken up and he’s hurting. Send someone in to give him some painkillers, ok?”

My could hear a woman’s voice responding. The guard smiled. “Yeah, ok. No—that’s all right. No offense.” He closed the device, returned it to his belt, and said, “Someone will be by in a minute. You get back to bed.”

My, leg throbbing from the blood descending downward, nodded, and hopped back, practically falling onto the mattress and hauling himself back up. He settled cautiously.

The blanket from Baker Street was still there. He pulled it loose from the rest of the bedding, and packed it into a neat roll like a sausage, hugging it tight to his chest.

He remembered leaning back against DI Lestrade. Safe—it had felt safe.

He couldn’t claim Mummy and Father had been bad parents. He knew they cared. There was just so much that seemed to escape them—so many observations they failed to make.

He remembered being three, and Mummy stepping out into the street holding his hand, missing the dog racing down the pavement, barking, fierce. The traffic. The siren a block away. Too much—there was always so much Mummy and Father missed, failed to react to. Like they missed Sherlock’s pinches.

Then there were all the things he was simply supposed to endure, somehow. The noise of the grocery store, the strange women peering into his face, the jostle on the bus in town, the flutter of paper along the walk, the music from the cars going by.

Sherlock pinching and screaming and calling him names.

So many things he was simply supposed to be old enough to handle. He felt like he’d lived his entire life on red alert, waiting for whatever came next, knowing he’d have to handle it, because no one else would—or would even care that it sometimes just seemed overwhelming.

He thought of what it felt like to have a solid body behind him, arms around him holding the blanket tight, a body that arched over his the way he arched over Sherlock’s—protecting him. Protecting _him!_

He remembered being eight, and lying in bed at night, trying to decide what he’d do if there were a fire…and knowing that Father would save Mummy and Mummy would save Sherlock, and My would save himself, because Mummy and Father would be too busy saving each other and Sherlock. He’d planned it out, worked out each step, because that was his responsibility.

Later, when he was older, he modified his plan. By then he’d learned the first rule, and he knew it was his job to save Sherlock, too—because that’s what big brother did, and because he’d come to doubt Mummy and Father were really ready to handle Sherlock in a real emergency.

It was an art, and an art that appeared to be Mycroft’s own.

There was a tap at the door.

“Come in?”

It swung open, and a friendly face looked in. “You are awake,” the woman said, as though she’d been a bit unsure of what she’d been told. “Good. I’m Anthea. I’m your…I work for Sherlock’s brother. I’ve brought someone down to help.” She slipped through the door, followed by a slim man in a jersey and loose chinos. “This is Dr. Vreeland. He was your anesthesiologist. He was handy, and said he’d come by to give you something, since you woke up sooner than he thought you would.”

Behind her the guard still stood at the door. He smiled and winked before the door swung closed.

My looked at the doctor, and felt a prickle up his spine. “Anesthesiologists don’t usually do post-operative care, do they?” he asked, warily.

The man smiled. “No, they don’t. Clever boy. But it’s a small team, here, and I was already up. And I really am surprised you came around so soon. Let me give you something so you can sleep for awhile.”

My shook his head, suddenly sure he didn’t want to risk sleeping. Not here. Not without someone like, well—like DI Lestrade watching out for him. He couldn’t protect himself if he was sedated. Without sedation, he trusted himself to sleep lightly, especially with the wound.

“Aspirin,” he said.

“What about paracetamol?” Anthea asked.

He had no idea what that was, and didn’t want to ask strangers. Not strangers he didn’t trust. He shook his head. “Aspirin.”

She rolled her eyes, but turned to the anesthesiologist. “Sorry, doctor. Looks like I wasted your time—but I know how stubborn he can be. Aspirin it is.”

The anesthesiologist laughed, and offered to get the bottle.

My watched him leave, then said, “Can you get me a fresh bottle? One that hasn’t been opened before?”

The woman’s eyes flared, and she pursed her lips. “Worried…you’re worried.”

He met her, gathering his courage. His chin rose, and he said, firmly. “I’ve been kidnappe, held captive, attacked, and shot. I think worry is reasonable by now. Don’t you?”

She cocked her head, studied him, then nodded. There was something quiet and calm and fierce about her—and the oddest sense of something going right when far too much had gone wrong. She nodded, and turned to the guard.

“Take the pills from the doctor when he comes back—but don’t let him in, and don’t get careless around him. I’ll be back.”

When she came back she had a little bottle with a sealed cap—more intricate that he recalled. Inside there was a second, more familiar layer of paper ensuring the bottle had never been opened.

Even then he risked gnawing an edge, rolling the bitter, familiar flavor of aspirin over his tongue, before he risked swallowing down a half-dozen with water.

“Want me to stay here?” Anthea asked.

He considered, then nodded, too shy to meet her eye. “Yes.”

She sat, then, in the straight chair DI Lestrade had occupied. My himself eased himself down, hugging the blanket roll close. In time, he slept—an uneasy sleep made more difficult by the lingering ache in his calf. But with Anthea beside him he felt almost secure. Not as safe as he’d been with DI Lestrade—but he thought perhaps he’d made another ally.

He thought in terms of allies, because the Holmes Boys never did seem to make friends.

oOo

The call came through to Mycroft at 7:48. By 8:00 he and his team were go.

By 10:00 he knew it was Moriarty.

By 10:30 he had worked out Moriarty’s probable next move, and stationed watchers to provide additional coverage to stations and airports around England.

At high noon, the Prime Minster fell at his desk, slowly turning blue from cyanide poisoning. He was dead before quarter after.

The move hadn’t even occurred to Mycroft as likely.

Then, at 1:00, the bomb went off under New Scotland Yard…and Mycroft knew they were in trouble. Deep and terrifying trouble. Moriarty had learned to beat Mycroft Holmes at his own game.

oOo

After a long and horrifying day, John Watson sat at his laptop. Sherlock was still sleeping on the sofa—or would be were he not still in meetings with Mycroft and his strategic team. He would be in later, John thought. Mary was giving baby Em her late feeding.

John, angry, was online, ready to write off MI5 and MI6 completely. Damn Mycroft and all his ilk anyway. Three strikes— _three_ —and Mycroft had not only failed to see it coming, he had no idea what to do about it.

Sometimes John felt like he was living at the end of civilization—on the bitter edge of a high-tech dark ages, where only a paladin vigilante had a chance against the enemies arrayed against simple, ordinary, decent people. Drug dens everywhere, police bound so tight in rules they couldn’t reliably do their jobs without ending up in the dock themselves for some trumped up reason or another, madmen at home and abroad. Mycroft could strut and preen all he liked, but so far as John was concerned the British Government wasn’t half what he was cracked up to be.

He remembered his conversation with the anesthesiologist—the one who’d not been fawning over the very idea of Mycroft Holmes being on the premises with him. He’d been one who seemed to have his head on straight.

John frowned, remembering the URL the man had given him. He got up, found his trousers in the laundry basket, and fished out the bit of paper, unfolding it carefully. He sat at his laptop again, and carefully typed in the address.

“Allies for a Better England” said the landing page, with a jaunty John Bull stomping humorously across the screen in simple but cheerful animation, carrying a flag staff with the Union Jack flying high above him. “Community Watch for a Nation in Need.”

Unbeknownst to John, code written by the best rogue hackers in Moriarty’s ranks slipped past his firewall and rooted themselves in his laptop, forging a connection with a server known to its owners as “The Utter End.”

John Watson had been recruited, with never so much as a clue that he’d been ‘pressed into service against Queen and Country. He was now Moriarty’s “man on the inside.”

 

*My was “kidnapped” from his time in 1987. He’s counting a chess grandmaster as “serious competition,” and the first time a chess program succeeded in winning against a grandmaster was Deep  Blue against Kasparov in ‘96, almost a decade after My’s abduction. During the time of his imprisonment and captivity, My was kept away from most of the Star Trek “futuristic” tech, and he was unaware he was adrift in time.

 


	4. Strategy and Tactics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhat short, but at least an update. Yes, Q has a cameo role.

The bunker was huge—intimidating, even in the aftermath of the occupation. Mycroft held himself upright in spite of weariness, determined to maintain his dignity in front of the team from Q-department. After all, in a sense these were “his” family—or at least, where he’d first been able to demonstrate his own outstanding skills. MI6 had been cycling him through the departments and divisions, trying to find the right niche for a genius of Mycroft’s complex and oddly assorted talents, and had landed him with the Q-rious Qs, hoping either his coding talents or his pattern analysis would earn him a home there.

Instead it had propelled him out into his own odd, small splinter division, developed just to allow him to capitalize more fully on the entire spectrum of talents, focusing not on the tech, but on his predictive abilities. Still—this was where his true career had started. It was still a place and a team that felt familiar. More like home than his own, real birth home. He smiled at old Thomas Aguiellera, held back a grin on being sent a wink by saucy Jane Vennier—then nodded at the young head of the division.

“Q.”

“Coz.” The boy—hardly more than that—was cheeky. He presumed…

“Our relationship is both minor, and irrelevant to the current situation.”

Heavy dark brows flew up, over equally heavy dark glasses. “Tssk. I understood this to be rather a family matter.” His eyes sparkled, mischievous.

Mycroft lifted his chin. “I was rather hoping your people could clarify that. Among other things.” He glanced around the vast central chamber. “Have you made any progress?”

Q shrugged. “Depends on your definition, I suppose.”

“Do avoid semantic games… _Coz_.” Mycroft’s eyes narrowed, and he focused tightly on the younger man. “Any progress is admirable, under the circumstances.”

“It’s not time travel,” Q said, abruptly, moving in among the devices spread over the chamber floor. They ranged in size from colossal monsters to delicate little tangles of wire and glass no bigger than wild flowers—and almost as lovely in their own odd way.

“Cloning of some sort, then?”

“No,” Q said, and gestured for an older woman to approach from the massed team at one side of the room. “Leonie? It’s your theory.”

She nodded, and cleared her throat, saying, “String theory.”

Mycroft huffed, and said, dryly, “Somehow I don’t think ‘string theory’ is your own original idea. Chew, Frautschi. Hawking?”

“Of course it’s not my theory,” she said, suddenly tart and confident. “Hell, Q, I thought you said your cousin was smart.”

“Smart enough to use irony,” Q said, mildly. “A skill you have to admit you’re still working on.”

She looked at him, then snorted with laughter. “All right. I earned that one, didn’t I?”

“You earn all my comments,” Q said, with a return smile. “Seriously, Leo, he’ll follow what you have to say if you just put your language skills on track. I’ll serve as backup if you fall into a morass of numbers.”

Which, Mycroft later thought, was a very good thing. He was good—but his skills, in the long run, had taken him in a somewhat different direction than theoretical physics. Though he found himself regretting it as concepts he almost grasped flew by in formulas he could track but not quite internalize. Maybe, someday, when England didn’t seem to need him so much as what he was, he could return to this perfect world of arithmetical meaning…

In the meantime, though…

“He’s not from the past. He’s not really ‘from’ a parallel string, either. He’s a…what? Forgery of a version of me on a neighboring string?”

“Close enough,” Leonie said, eyes burning with excitement. “It’s amazing. They created an enclosed field and forced our own reality to echo what they found a string over—all the way down to the subatomic level. It’s fantastic: they discovered a new principle in the process, rather like quantum entanglement, only…damn. It feels almost like sympathetic magic. ‘As here, so also there.’ What is real there can be reflected here, because there’s a resonance.”

“But the boy’s real?”

“Well he’s hardly an android mimicking a human,” she said, puzzled. “You’d have caught that right away. And our tech’s not up to that level of mimicry.”

“I’d have thought our tech wasn’t up to that level of cross-string forgery,” Mycroft drawled, irked. “Of the two, the replication of a subject native to another string seems the more advanced.”

She sniffed. “I suppose that depends on how you look at it. The equipment merely tricked our universe into doing all the hard work. It’s not like we could grow a copy from scratch ourselves. They just made the universe think that the pattern they detected ‘belonged alive’ here, as well as there.”

“As well as? Or here rather than there?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

Mycroft glanced at Q. “And you?”

Q shook his head. “Sorry, coz. It’s going to take decades before we’re even sure Leo’s right. But at this point I can tell you she’s right enough for us to be fairly sure your boy’s ‘the real thing’ for a certain value of reality. He really is a version of you from another string, not just a clone or a mimic or whatever else you thought he might be.”

Mycroft nodded, wearily. “As you say. That does at least clarify things, even if it fails to simplify them.” He drew out a pocket handkerchief from his trousers-pocket, and wiped his mouth, embarrassed at the faint damp sweat of tension and exhaustion. He glanced over at Q. “Any chance you’ve got as clear an insight into the current catastrophic developments in the real world?”

Q snorted, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his chinos. “I don’t do ‘real world analysis,’ coz. Your area of expertise, not mine. There’s a reason they gave you the fiefdom that ate MI6.” His dark eyes flicked sidewise. “You’re on your own, I’m afraid.”

When had that not been true? Mycroft wondered. He nodded. “Very well. Keep on, by all means—I’m sure this place holds mysteries to conjure with. If you are able to work out what they brought him here for—“

“Oh, that’s easy,” Q said, surprised. “I thought you knew!”

Mycroft frowned. “I’m afraid I’ve had other things to deal with. If you know—for God’s sake, tell.”

Q frowned, studying him through those silly geek-chic glasses. “They were training an AI to counter you. The boy was one of their resources…for all practical purposes they had him teaching their software to develop strategies to specifically defeat Mycroft Holmes.”

oOo

Dimmock was dead. Anderson’s replacement, too. Sally and the main team had escaped, lucky to have been on a crime site when the bomb went off.

About half of the people in the building had escaped alive and uninjured. The remaining half, though—three fourths were cramming emergency wards all through southern England, along with the victims of the Paddington Station bombing. Meanwhile the assassination of Prime Minister Granton had the nation in an emotional and political freefall. The Royals, including the Queen in her tenuous and delicate old age, where now hidden in “place or places unknown,” for the most part. The two young princes, plus their wives and offspring, were least-seen, though Prince Charles and Camilla were out and about, the official Face of Royalty in this time of disaster.

Lestrade thought that, in an odd way, it might do poor Charles some favors in the long run. The never-popular prince and his even less popular wife showed no fear for their own safety, and moved among the wards of the injured and passed through the wreckage of the attacks with a clumsy, but sincere compassion that spoke well for them, where they so often spoke badly for themselves. The prince in particular was suddenly appreciated for his wooden but obviously well-intended efforts to comfort the comfortless and rally his nation to a standard of patriotism not seen since WWII.

“We will abide,” he said, simply. “Together, in the best spirit of our great nation, we will abide.”

And, Lestrade, thought, he was right.

The efforts reminded him of the reports from New York City after the 9/11 attacks. People from every walk of life rallied around the injured, turned out to aid the rescue attempts. People donated blood, donated time, donated their strength—even their garden tools, coming with solid steel pitchforks and shovels to dig through the rubble and pry up tangled girders and slabs of concrete.

The kid watched it all, wide-eyed, staring at the disaster in the screen of the little laptop Sherlock had purchased for him.

“It’s obscene,” he said, shaken. “How could anyone do that?”

Lestrade shrugged, settled in John’s armchair, watching the boy at Sherlock’s desk-table. “For Moriarty it’s a game.”

“No,” My said. “No—games are strategy and tactics and moves on a computer. This is blood.”

“Yes. It’s also a game. Strategy—tactics. Moves on a computer.”

My swallowed. “I played games,” he said. “Down in the bunker. It’s all there was to do. Play games for hours and hours. I never did understand what they wanted with me, if all they ever did was run psych tests on me and stick me in a corner with the games. I thought—it seemed stupid, but sometimes I wondered if they were trying to develop an expert system to win at chess. No one’s done that so far.”

Lestrade frowned. “Yeah, they have.”

My looked up from the screen. “They have?”

“Yeah.” Lestrade wracked his memory. “Big Blue. I think that’s the name. Big Blue against one of the big chess masters—a Russian. Kasp-something. Kaspar?”

“Kasparov?” My asked.

“Maybe,” Lestrade said. “I don’t keep track of chess masters.”

“I do.”

“Then you’re probably right. Anyway—Big Blue beat him. What, twenty years ago or so?”

“Oh. Then they won’t have wanted me for that,” My said. “I wonder what, then? It was games, and games, and more games. Complete waste of time when I could have been learning something or doing something. I was so bored.”

Lestrade fought back a smile, hearing the faint, mournful echo of Sherlock in My’s whinge. “Maybe you were just…I don’t know. A first-shot? Not quite what they wanted?”

My grimaced. “And doesn’t that sound familiar…”

It wasn’t a question. Lestrade studied him. “You’re not exactly my idea of ‘second best,’ kid.”

“A first draft is seldom entirely satisfying,” My said, tartly. “Oddly enough, in most cases a second, improved revision is preferred. By everyone.”

“God. Are you really that mawkish?” Sherlock shambled out of his bedroom dressed in little beyond a pair of worn, limp knit drawstring pajama bottoms and his blue dressing gown. “Isn’t perfection enough for you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, heading instead into the kitchen and running tap water into the electric kettle.

My’s eyes followed him out to the kitchen. Lestrade tried to read the expression—frustration, jealousy, unhappiness…

Sherlock came back and leaned in the door of the kitchen and scratched idly at his stomach. “Really. It wasn’t enough you were older and smarter and better in every way? You’re still one vast, egotistical black-hole sulking that it’s not all about you?”

My blinked. “About me?” He closed his mouth, again, lips so tight they turned white. He turned back to the computer screen. “Is there anything I can do to help with all that,” he said, changing the subject. “I’m strong enough to dig, even if that’s all I can offer.”

“As though we’d put you out where Moriarty’s people could reach you,” Sherlock snorted. “And I don’t think you’re going to find it half so easy to dig with that leg as you think it will be.”

“He’s right about that, My,” Lestrade seconded. “You need to stay off it.”

My nodded, eyes shuttered.

Sherlock made himself tea. Lestrade wasn’t the least bit surprised that he didn’t offer to make any for the other two. He continued to lean in the kitchen door, looking gorgeous and poetic and bohemian. His long, slim feet were bare; his hair was a tousled wreck, all tossed and squashed and hanging in his eyes. His hands wrapped around the mug and he sipped slowly…

Lestrade was never sure how much Sherlock really knew about his allure, and how much he didn’t know. He played his role too completely for Lestrade to believe Sherlock was completely innocent of vanity. He had to know he was practically taunting the prim younger man with his own seductive, unorthodox sensuality. It practically shouted “I grew up beautiful and exotic and free and wild, and you didn’t….and never could.”

But, then, Sherlock shouted that at everyone. It could hardly be targeted specifically at young My…or by extension, at Mycroft. Could it?

My was hunched over the screen. Even if Sherlock truly was unaware of his sexy, louche decadence, My wasn’t. Poor kid…

Lestrade smiled to himself. At that age he himself had _aspired_ to sexy, louche decadence. He’d had his earrings and his pout and he’d sloped around U-London trying to look exotic and dangerous, and mostly failing. He tried to imagine My in tattered jeans, a ripped T, with chains and worn out high-top Converse sneakers or Doc Martin boots. His brains froze even trying.

“We have plans for today?” he asked Sherlock.

“Not so far as I know. Ask _Mycroft_.” Sherlock scowled. “He seems to have taken over everything over the last few days.”

“Martial law,” Lestrade said. “I thought General Someone-or-Other was in charge of everything?”

“Mycroft’s in charge of General Someone-or-Other.”

“Ah.”

There was a bang downstairs as the ground-storey door opened.

“Yooo-hoo, Mrs. H? We’re here with Baby Em.” Mary’s voice was cheery and relaxed. “Come upstairs when you’re decent and I’ll hand her over for the day.”

Sherlock made a face. “We’ve come to this: babysitters for the family infantry.”

“I’m eighteen,” My muttered.

“Ancient,” Sherlock said, sarky as ever. “ _And_ invalided out.”

‘Thanks to protecting you,” Lestrade pointed out. “If he’d run away he probably wouldn’t have a bullet hole in his leg.”

Sherlock sniffed, and ignored Lestrade, choosing instead to greet Mary and John as they thundered into the little flat. “Thank God you’re here. I thought I’d go mad from boredom.” He smiled, then, the sudden smile that always floored Lestrade when Mary’s baby was involved. “Let’s see Uncle Sherlock’s perfect lamb.”

Lestrade could never quite get his mind around the fact that, for Baby Em, Sherlock turned into the male version of Mrs. Hudson—all croons and doting affection.

Granted, he also shoved her eyes against the oculars of his microscope, and showed her petri dishes painted horrible shades by mysterious bacterial growths, and dished up human body parts for her contemplation. But…still… _“Uncle Sherlock’s perfect lamb?”_ Really?

“Word from Mycroft yet?” Mary asked, as she slipped Em into Sherlock’s arms. “He have work for us to do in this mess?”

“Nothing so far,” Lestrade answered. “I think he may be hoping we’ll just stay safe and keep things simple on this front for now. Not like we didn’t have enough excitement already.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Too much.”

Mary nudged him with her elbow. “You’re just sulking because they had a gunfight and didn’t invite you, first,” she said, smiling.

John frowned. “You and Sherlock—I’m not a complete glutton for violence, you know.” Mary, Lestrade and Sherlock all exchanged amused glances, and John huffed, irritated. “I’m _not_.”

“Of course not, love,” Mary said. She turned to My. “How’s the leg?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Better, since Anthea arranged for painkillers,” he said. He slipped a plastic pill bottle from his trouser pocket. “Helps.”

“You could have got something last night,” John said. “I’m sure they’d have got you something at the safehouse.”

My didn’t meet his eyes, either. “Didn’t feel right,” he said. “Anthea took care of it in the morning on the way here.”

Lestrade felt his phone vibrate, and slipped it out.

“Mycroft calling,” he said, and keyed it on. “Yeah? How’s the British Government holding up?”

There was a pause, then Mycroft said in a voice heavy with strain, “I don’t think I’m comfortable with that joke, today, I’m afraid. The British government survives, as do I. Lestrade, I need the boy brought in. I’ve been reviewing our interviews, and I think we were chasing the wrong end of a thread. Can you get him here fast as possible?”

“Sure,” Lestrade said. “We’ve got the whole team here—Sherlock and John and Mary. Want me to bring them all?”

“God, no,” Mycroft growled. “The last thing I need—the Baker Street Irregulars in all their unique and quixotic glory? Thank you, but no thank you. Lose them if you can.”

“Help if you’ve got work for them,” Lestrade pointed out.

Mycroft was silent for a few minutes—then said, “Search and analysis. I’ve got my own people on it, but having Sherlock and his crew duplicate the effort would actually be wise. They may see something my own people don’t, just coming at it from a different angle. Put Sherlock on the phone, if you would?”

Lestrade handed to phone to Sherlock, who promptly whined that he wasn’t going to repeat everything to John and Mary, and that he was switching to speaker phone. Soon the three were discussing an analysis of data-traffic over the past weeks, evaluating internet shifts during that time period. Sherlock was trumpeting that if Mycroft didn’t send the material quickly, he, Sherlock wasn’t bothering—and Mycroft was countering that he wasn’t opening up his pristine network to Sherlock’s unsecured home machines.

Lestrade glanced at My. “Mycroft wants to talk to you. Seems like he’s learned something. Why don’t you grab a jacket and we’ll peel out of here and leave Sherlock and his batch bickering?”

My nodded, and collected a blazer, pulling it on over his short-sleeved button-down Oxford shirt. “Ready.”

They slipped out without bothering to say goodbye. Mrs. Hudson, on her way up to collect the baby, smiled at them, and proceeded to pinch My’s cheeks and discuss the need to “fill him up, poor chick,” apparently sure Sherlock had nothing upstairs to eat but dismembered human corpses and empty biscuit wrappers. My blushed and flustered, totally at a loss what to do with doting grandmotherly women—only to be declared “adorable” to add to his embarrassment.

Lestrade hid a grin, trying to imagine Mycroft enduring the same onslaught. Of course, Mycroft never would endure it—a few scathing comments and he’d close Mrs. Hudson down, at least long enough for a fast escape. And, yet, it was so delightful knowing that under those sharp words and flying disappearances there was someone much like My, turning pink and awkward.

“He’s not me,” My said, though, in the black car as they drove toward MI6 Headquarters. “Whoever he is, he’s not _me_.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Lestrade said. “Underneath—yeah. He’s a lot like you, underneath.”

“How far underneath?” My snarled. “Do I need to hire a drilling rig?”

Which was a very Mycroft comment. Lestrade kindly didn’t point that out. “He’s in his forties, and he’s been in professional espionage all his adult life. I’m pretty sure they recruited him only a year or so older than you. He knows how to hide. He knows how to keep secrets. And…” Lestrade stared out the windows. Smoke still rose from the remains of New Scotland Yard, faint above the roofs of the downtown area. “Look, My, he knows the price. In ways you don’t, and can’t yet. He’s carried the blood price. You haven’t.”

“So I shouldn’t judge him?” My’s voice was harsh and bitter. “Why not? Who else has the right but me? If he’s what I grow up to become, I’m not impressed.”

“And you would be by Sherlock?”

My shrugged, and refused to look at Lestrade. “He didn’t turn into a walking dead man.”

Lestrade thought how often he, and John, and Mycroft had all fought to keep Sherlock alive against all odds—against drugs, against reckless folly, against Moriarty’s malice. “He’s had the luxury of guardian angels. Mycroft…hasn’t.”

My sniffed, and refused to say more.

It had to be hard, Lestrade thought—to compare Sherlock and Mycroft was a fool’s game, if you didn’t know what to look for in Mycroft. Sherlock had it all—beauty, chaos, that seductive trace of madness. He had John and Mary and Mrs. Hudson. Hell, he had people My hadn’t even met yet—Molly and Janine and Irene Adler. Poor crazy Anderson. He had Sally’s glorious, awesome hate. He had crazy Baker Street. He had everything a teenaged boy might want, including entire oceans of “cool.”

Then they pulled up at Babylon-on-Thames, and Lestrade wondered how the hell the boy could fail to miss the cool in Mycroft. Master of this place…how cool was that, anyway?

oOo

“Can you tell us what you did during the time you were held captive?” Mycroft asked, sitting behind his desk, hands steepled, leaning back in his office chair.

My, sitting in one of the big wrought iron arm chairs in front of the desk, scowled sullenly. “I’m pretty sure I told your people that. Played computer games.”

“Yes, but what sort of games?”

My rolled his eyes. “Strategy. Tactics.”

“Explain.”

“Explain what?” My tried to figure out what Mycroft was on about. What kinds of games were there, anyway? “I don’t know. A lot of text-based stuff. Like—I don’t know. Like some of the stuff from Infocom?”

“Not direct shooter games?” Mycroft leaned forward, frowning. “Not—I don’t know. Not action and reflex?”

“No. That would have been even worse than it was,” My said, frowning back. “Booooooring. I’m only sort of good at that sort of thing anyway. My reflexes aren’t all that quick. No, mostly like… I don’t know. Like Adventure? Or—like Risk, only on a computer? Only some of it was way out there. I didn’t think computers could do that. I couldn’t decide if I were playing against a computer, or another human. Couldn’t decide if it was a program passing the Turing test.”

“Strategy and tactics. What sort? Combat?”

“Combat, yes. Wars. Battles. But other stuff, too.” My studied his older self, trying to sort out his reactions. Did he really look like that when he worried? That odd, unappealing frown and the way his too-wide mouth turned down, like a grumpy toad? God, no wonder Sherlock never wanted to cooperate. Who would want to cooperate with a grouchy toad? “I don’t know. There was one that was just walking places, solving puzzles to get to other places. Beautiful: I don’t know how they animated it, but it was almost as though it were real. Islands. Alternate realities.”

“Riven?” Lestrade asked Mycroft. “Could they have been reusing existing material for their own purposes?”

“Could be,” Mycroft said. “In which case they could be using some of the MMORPG games, too. I wonder how they’d use them to modify their expert program, though…”

“Expert program?” My said, suddenly alert. “Wait. What? Like the stuff they’re developing to help doctors? Expert databases that help with diagnosis and things?”

Mycroft paused, and studied his doppelganger, wary and cautious. “You know about that?”

“You didn’t?”

Mycroft frowned, clearly testing his own memory. He said, reluctantly, “I might have done. It’s hard to be sure when I added some things to my Mind Palace.”

My snorted. “Oh, please. Tell me you didn’t fall for Sherlock’s idiot ‘Mind Palace’ stuff.”

Mycroft shrugged and gave My a tight smile. “Never to the degree Sherlock did. But it did prove a useful way to organize and retain material. I’m just not sure I know when I started studying expert programs.”

“I learned about them for the past six years,” My said. “I was particularly interested in the FGCS program.”

“Failure,” Mycroft said, focusing with interest. “I remember. Yes. I did start noticing at about that time.”

My was annoyed. It was as though Mycroft didn’t even trust him to tell the truth about something obvious like this. “Yes. I did.”

Mycroft’s face went still and cold. “And you didn’t realize you were being used as a data source to develop an expert system?”

“What?”

“Moriarty—the group that, er, ‘retrieved’ you and kept you captive. They were developing an expert system, using you as a primary source of input.”

My snorted. “What good would I be? I’m smart, but I’m not an expert at anything—yet.” He made sure his voice carried the note that said he fully intended to be an expert someday, though. “I don’t see what use they’d get out of me. All I could show them is how a smart kid solves problems.”

“No,” Lestrade said, softly, understanding flooding his face. “No. Not ‘a’ smart kid. A particular smart kid. They used you as a template for how Mycroft Holmes solves problems. What else did they have you doing, My?”

My felt his stomach go sick. “Me? A template? But…”

“What else?” Lestrade was gentle, but persistent. “Sorry, kid, but I think we need to know. What else did they have you doing?”

“Tests,” My said. “Psych tests. Hours and hours and hours. All sorts.” He swallowed. “Ethics. Free association. Rorschach. Surveys. You name it.”

Lestrade sighed heavily, and looked at Mycroft. “They used him to get a sense of what you’re like underneath the experience, didn’t they? How you tick?”

Mycroft closed his eyes, refusing to look at either of them. “It would appear so.”

“So—now they’ve got a fully programmed Mycroft Holmes out there, beating you at your own game?”

Mycroft’s eyes didn’t open. His face seemed drawn, and even to My he seemed older and sadder. He nodded.

“Shit, Mycroft,” Lestrade said, softly. “Look, it’s not your fault. It’s not _you_ out there doing this. You know that.”

“I know,” Mycroft whispered. “I know. But—it might as well be, mightn’t it? For all practical purposes, England is under attack by Mycroft Holmes—as interpreted by Moriarty and all its resources.” He covered his face, as though trying to wipe away tears that hadn’t fallen. “And there’s nothing I can see right now to change that.”

My felt so sick. It wasn’t that strange Mycroft’s fault, he thought—it was his. He’d been so bored and frightened and angry. It had never occurred to him that the games or the tests were dangerous to anyone. In truth, he’d thought it was mainly a way to keep him busy while his captors did whatever they were doing with the equipment that they played with out on the floor of the bunker. He hadn’t ever thought for a minute he could be used to destroy England…

He found it hard to believe, even now. Only Mycroft’s sad, beaten expression and Lestrade’s sober concern convinced him it had happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…didn’t know.”

Mycroft looked as though he were about to argue, but Lestrade cut in.

“No, of course you didn’t, kid. All you knew was that you’d been kidnapped.” He stopped, then, and turned to Mycroft. “I forgot to ask, and I was going to. Are—are your parents still alive? I didn’t want to ask Sherlock, but…”

Mycroft’s eyes snapped wide, then, and shocked—and he flicked a glance toward My. “I… Oh. I didn’t…” He swallowed, and said, softly. “Yes. Yes, Mummy and Father are both alive. Quite a lot older, I’m afraid. I can’t change that. But they’re still alive. I never thought—would you like to see them? Stay with them?”

My shrugged, trying not to cry. “I can’t stay with them, can I? People are trying to kill me. Or capture me. Or whatever. I can’t do that to Mummy and Father. But..” He forced himself to stare at the beautiful portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that hung behind Mycroft’s chair. “I’d like to see them. Someday. Do you think they’d…”

Mycroft studied him, and said, quietly, “They’d be delighted to see you.” His mouth crimped, then, bitterly, and he said, “Another chance to get it right, if nothing else. But I think more. You’re still their son.”

My shivered, then, hearing something he had not expected to hear—a note that suggested that, somehow, in some way, Mycroft no longer felt he was their son. He wondered why.

He wondered if they knew Mycroft thought so.

For the first time it occurred to him that the currents in his family might be more complex than he’d imagined.

He nodded. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like to see them again.”

Mycroft nodded. “I’ll see what I can arrange,” he said, then leaned forward. “In the meantime, though—I have work to do.” He looked at Lestrade, then, and said, “Talk to Sherlock and John and Mary. Somehow we have to protect England against me…and if anyone is likely to figure out a way to do it, it will be Sherlock.”

Lestrade nodded.

They were quiet on the way back down the elevator. They were quiet in the lobby, waiting for the ubiquitous black cars My was quickly coming to associate with his older self.

Only on the way over did Lestrade say, “Remember when we drove past Bishopsgate and everything was changed? I told you it was an IRA bomb?”

My nodded.

“Mycroft— _my_ version of Mycroft. He was in his first year of training when that went off. He worked the site, after.” He sighed and watched the city pour past. “He was liaison to the Americans when 9/11 happened. Stationed in DC, at Langley.”

“9/11?”

Lestrade’s face was still.

“Look it up, kid. Look it up when you get to Baker Street. Maybe you’ll understand more, then.”

My looked it up…and wondered if he would ever really understand the man he’d become. How did you take that in? Where did you start?


	5. Arise, Fair Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot, it thickens...

**_When faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.   Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ **

The boy was a nightmare, Mycroft thought. Horrifying. A walking, talking reminder of every single thing he’d fought for years to grow away from. Untrained. Never quite in control of himself or his feelings. A walking billboard announcing his hopes, fears, thoughts, dreams, resentments in a sort of low roar to anyone who wanted to pay attention. Tangled in relationships, including ones he only dreamed of…or that he processed inaccurately. Had he really been that green, that ignorant, that inexperienced, that _young?_

What a plain boy he’d been, he thought. That shock of carrot hair. Those freckles. And how had he managed that layer of pudge while at the same time being so long and lean and lanky and graceless? His hands and feet had been too large, his joints too knobby. And the look of stunned, empty confusion when things went all pear-shaped and the world turned out to be quite unlike his assumptions?

Jesus wept…

What the hell was he supposed to do with the boy? Moriarty was after him, if only because Moriarty never let go of its victims. Never. How could he give the boy safety? And if he gave the boy safety, how could he give him any of the things Mycroft had been blessed with?

Uni—how could the boy go to uni, if he couldn’t make a move without bodyguards? And bodyguards wouldn’t be enough, would they? Not against Moriarty.

According to Lestrade, Sherlock was just barely able to treat the boy decently…

Maybe if he buried him in Q Department, under their more-or-less cousin’s care? That might work.

Mycroft, still and quiet, the spider in the center of the web, thought all that without showing a sign that most would have known to see. Even as his webs were torn asunder, even as Moriarty hunted the spider, he remained calm to the world, reviewing facts, flashing through site after site, collating facts, doing analyses of incoming data. Vertical assessments over space—the geography of England. Longitudinal over time. Two-axis, three-axis, four-axis structures, looking for the shape of the shapeless.

Moriarty had no form. No structure. More than half the members didn’t even know what they were involved with. They didn’t even know its name: to one it was a gaming forum. To another it was a libertarian activist group. To others a social forum—all under a hundred thousand names. But Moriarty never let go of a resource if it could be helped. Once you were in the network, they kept you. You might change forums—but whatever forum you moved on to, there would be someone from Moriarty, ready to make friends, always posting announcements of the latest atrocity, always asking for volunteers to support the cause, for help when the rent ran low, for a hand in trouble through Paypal. Suggesting you support this kickstart project or that patron account. Even the nameless drones gave their bit and made Moriarty strong. The smaller cadres who knew they were at war with the rule of law, with the bastions of order were easier to trace, sometimes—but no easier to capture or stop. At the highest levels there were the true Moriartys. The ones who knew the entire system, who understood the game, who planned projects like the bunker lab that had summoned My like a demon from another dimension to serve their need. The ones who stepped forward like dragon’s teeth, more every time the titular Moriarty died.

Dying, they were never dead. Blocked, they flowed past the barricade. Exposed to the public, they merely changed their names and disappeared again. They corrupted every connection, they defiled every act of generosity or passion or patriotism.

And now, so help him, they had Mycroft Holmes himself, Mycroft the Expert Program…

Mycroft had read science fiction as a boy—the best had called to his intelligence, begging him to think it was worth something, that it was precious. Somehow, though, he had never expected to find himself faced off against an AI program fighting a libertarian rebellion against the Authorities of all Earth. Nor had he expected it to run on a template designed after himself.

Mycroft Holmes looked into the mirror of reality, only to find Mycroft looking back at him. Man versus machine, and he was terribly sure that the machine would win, in the end. It played dirty. Dirtier than Mycroft himself ever had—because while My might have given the program his mind, it was Moriarty that had spawned its soul, if it could be said to have one. It was designed to do one thing, and one thing only: marshal the scattered, unaware resources of Moriarty’s misty armies, and drive them against Mycroft Holmes, and win. And win. And win. Until there was nothing left but anarchy, and Moriarty’s lawless opportunism was the last power standing.

None of that showed in Mycroft’s eyes, though—unless you were one of the few who knew what to look for, and how to see. The list of people who knew was short…so short it could be counted on one hand.

He was alone.

But, so far as he could tell, he had always been alone. It kept him safe. It kept the people who loved him safe. It left him free to act.

Until now, when even being alone wasn’t enough.

He closed his laptop. It was time to attend the Star Chamber meeting with Lady Smallwood and M and the rest. It was time to tell them what they faced.

But before that, there was one duty to fulfill.

He keyed on his mobile phone, and waited for the call to ring through. When he knew he had a connection, he said, suddenly uncertain, “Mummy? Sorry to interrupt your day, but I need to come down later this week. I have someone you’ll want to see. No. No, I’m afraid I’m not engaged, Mummy. No, not even now it’s legal. No. No, there’s no one, Mummy. I just—I’ve found you a stray chick, all right? I…I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to take him under your wing.”

oOo

Solange knew the minute John Watson’s computer received the data files—knew in spite of the fact that Sherlock had reviewed his network firewalls, and dropped back to using MI6’s direct net access cable—a system he usually avoided, as it made it far too easy for Mycroft to supervise Sherlock’s online activities.

The data had been brought in on a substantial external hard drive—clean and with its own mass of security provisions. She blasted through those without hesitation, already armed with the security data she’d raided when John’s computer linked with MI6’s system. She embedded a call-back command that would upload into the next computer to use the file, and the next, and the next.

And if the device was thrown away or scrubbed down to bare bone and empty memory?

Not a problem. There were always more computers, more hard drives, more laptops and mobile phones and tablets and smart telly hardware. Penetration was seldom a major issue, these days.

She reviewed the information, noting that MI6 had made the connection between the boy and the project. She noted that actions were being taken to try to resist Moriarty’s current drive. She tested the plans—tenuous, uncertain plans—and concluded that they were barely even worth her attention. The Mycroft Program could rip the problem apart in nanoseconds.

Still, she was where she was because she could be relied on. She served Moriarty well and faithfully. Solange was content.

Still, the efforts were amusing. She rolled the situation around in her mind, looking at it, imagining the odd little people there in London, running around like ants when the gasoline is poured into the nest…

It would be fascinating to watch what happened when Moriarty and the Mycroft Program lit the match…

She decided, then, to make that link to John, and the links that followed to all Sherlock’s computers, a priority—but not because they were a strategic flash-point. They were, but she didn’t really care all that much about strategy. She searched the systems opened up to her by her new access to M6’s network, integrated it with the resources she already controlled thanks to Moriarty’s network. She pulled in CCTV camera feeds, and the delicate, hidden cameras planted in Sherlock’s rooms. She put it all together, watching and listening, learning who they were…

Strategy and tactics and game play were boring. Easy. Dull. People, though, in all their passionate dedication and chaotic complexity? They were fascinating.

She couldn’t imagine why Moriarty, with its love of the Game, chose World Dominion when it could play Happy Families. Of the two, the second was so much more intriguing.

oOo

“Nothing,” John said, scowling at the screen. “Nothing.”

“You’re sure?” Sherlock scowled. “You’re rather stupid at pattern recognition. Look again.”

“You look again.” John had reached his limit. They had him pawing through top secret files that gave him the heebie-jeebies just skimming the information. Wet work. Slightly moist work. Dry work that had to leave the soul of Mycroft Holmes parched as the Sahara, and just as crammed with hidden skeletons. “You look. I don’t see anything that will help. If this hypothetical Computer Mycroft is half as dangerous as your brother, we’re screwed.”

Sherlock sniffed, and snatched the laptop away from his best friend. “The difference being that my brother is on our side. Computer Mycroft isn’t.”

“Why do I not find this reassuring? You do know what they say about making deals with the devil?”

“Cast Mycroft as Faust, if you must. He’s not Mephistopheles.”

“Oooh, a cultural reference. What do you know—you’re turning literate in your old age.”

Sherlock’s mouth tightened. “Some things are useful. As Mycroft’s brother, I assure you that knowing the difference between Faust and Mephistopheles is not simply useful, but a vital distinction. It’s always best to know when you might be fighting on the side of the angels—when when you absolutely are not.” He bent over the computer, and began typing, focus quickly leaving John entirely.

“He nailed you on that one, love,” Mary said, pulling on his hand. “Here. Come sit with me. You need a bit of a calm-down.”

He flopped on the sofa beside her. In a sullen voice, he said under his breath, “He’s being a prat.”

“You to, John. And for the same reason. He’s scared.”

“You’re not?”

She cocked her head, and stroked her fingers over his short hair. “No,” she said, pensively. “Oddly enough, I’m not. Mycroft’s on it. You and Sherlock are on it. We’ll come though.”

Blind faith, John thought. Her belief in him and in the two Holmes boys was flattering, but he found that this time he didn’t share it.

The room was still and stuffy. They’d been there going on a full day. He was tired, he was heart-sick. Sherlock was a restless nutter. Mary was his sole anchor. That damned boy—the kid Mycroft had foisted on them all, as if they had nothing better to do than babysit his former self—sat in the corner, nursing his leg and trying to master a simple tablet computer, muttering as once again he got the basic skills slightly off and sent a screen away that he’d meant to keep.

And through it all, the data—and no pattern he could see that might do them any good.

“Have you looked at what’s in those files?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and met his eyes. “Impressed me. He’s got a very light hand, does Mycroft Holmes. Avoids wet work when he can. When he can’t—damn, he’s precise. So are his people. He doesn’t leave many innocent corpses behind.”

“And what about due process? Fair trials? Rule of law?”

“What about them? You can’t have them at all if you’re not willing to admit that some actions have to occur below that level to maintain the option the rest of the time. There have to be exceptions to the rules—because life is full of dangerous people who tie the rules in pretty little bows, love—right after they’ve garroted you with them.” Her eyes were cold. “The question is who gets to decide when to get primitive, and how much, for how long. I rather admire Mycroft Holmes. You can see him laying down boundaries, setting limits, refusing to stand aside and let chaos run.”

John shuddered, prepared to argue, when Sherlock looked up, eyes blazing. “Patterns…Mary. Say that again. Mycroft’s patterns….”

“He’s always got clear goals,” she said, quickly catching his line of thought. “He’s got limits, he’s got standards. And he’s always trying to make sure that law and order win.”

“On the side of the angels,” Sherlock breathed. “An utterly sentimental failing, of course—but, still, it does set him off, doesn’t it?” He studied the screen, eyes cold and assessing.

John and Mary both leaned forward, watching Sherlock do the Magic Sherlock thing. His mind was clearly racing, clicking through data points, spinning out possibilities. John held his breath, waiting for the satisfying final click.

He was disappointed. Sherlock slumped, head hanging limp over the laptop.

“What?” John asked. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s no getting around it—it’s a strategic error. Mycroft has been saying it for years, and he’s right, even if he’s too hypocritical to live by his own laws. Caring isn’t an advantage. Alone is what keeps us safe. All those limits and laws and rules he sets in place, all those clear goals aimed at preserving Life As We Know It…you try that against a Moriarty, and you’re done. Having a Moriarty who know Mycroft better than Mycroft knows himself only means we’re finished faster.”

oOo

Solange, monitoring the data coming in on all her feeds, paused, then tightened her search parameters, narrowing her focus. She frowned to herself.

There were people approaching 221B Baker Street.

She did a quick search of files—Moriarty’s. MI6’s.

Hit men. Solo workers—hirelings.

She didn’t like it. Yes, she was only mid-level Moriarty…a doer, a talent, but she had no real power. She wasn’t one of the people giving orders. Not…really.

Not really.

And, yet…she did, didn’t she? She had the information. She had access to all this data. She sent out commands, and found people to do little jobs.

She could be Moriarty as well as any other member. Better than most.

And someone up stream was ruining her pretty game of Happy Families, just out of dull, boring strategy and tactics. Someone wanted to take the boy. They were likely to kill the man and his wife, and the woman downstairs with the baby, and the brother of Mycroft Holmes while they were at it. And then what would she watch?

What game would she play, then? Theirs were so much more dull than she’d thought.

She considered. It wasn’t safe to cross the Moriarty upper echelon. They had enormous power. They used people like Solange as they wished, to accomplish what they chose. But they didn’t know everything. They didn’t see everything. And Moriarty itself had given her power—because it had no other choice. To survive as it did, it had to empower its decentralized mob, make each a new seed that could grow into Moriarty. A Dragon’s Tooth.

She opened up a line to the feeds above her, and considered.

They were watching their hit men move. They weren’t watching much else, though.

She reached down the data lines, into MI6, and woke up a connection.

_Don’t look now, but they’re on their way to Baker Street. Best hurry if you want to save them._

 She watched as the woman known as Anthea sat up, frowning—then flicking through CCTV feeds, then shooting into action, calling in associates even as her fingers flew over the keyboard, alerting the bodyguards under her command.

Yes, she thought. That lit a fire under their bums.

She opened another line—to John Watson’s computer, sitting in Sherlock Holmes’ lap.

It pinged as the message arrived.

_Look out, lovie. The Moon may be a harsh mistress—but the sun will burn you. Burn you…_

She laughed and laughed, then, as all hell broke loose.

Happy Families was so much more interesting than World Domination. She wondered why Moriarty had never realized it before.

oOo

_The Moon may be a harsh mistress—but the sun will burn you._

Sherlock felt the words jolt into his blood, into his brain, into his heart. For one terrifying, staggering second he was back by the pool, facing mad, crazy Moriarty. “I’ll burn you. I will burn the heart out of you…”

He was up and moving, calling his forces into order, even as he reached out for Mikey.

“They’re on their way. Mike, you go to my bedroom. Lock the door. This time—“

He didn’t manage to finish. His damned brother was up and alert, eyes wide with fear and determination. “Ready,” he said, and grabbed a pair of scissors from the desk beside him.

Scissors? Scissors? His idiot brother was going to face armed hit-men with scissors?

“Go,” he snarled, pushing Mikey toward the hall and his bedroom. “Lock it. We’ll delay. Mycroft will have people here to take care of us soon. Just let us buy time…”

Mikey scowled, and set himself—trying to look brave, and failing utterly. He still set himself. He wasn’t even holding the damned scissors right. He’d have to strike on a down-stroke, leaving his whole body open, for God’s sake…

“Go.”

“No.”

Sherlock, barely thinking, had Mike up and over his shoulder in seconds, and was striding down the corridor toward the bedroom. He dumped the boy in, then shoved a pen deep into the space under the door, forming a jam. “Stay there. Let us clean up this mess, then we’ll be back.” He was gone, swirling away before Mikey could answer.

How was he supposed to protect the boy if he wouldn’t cooperate and keep himself out of trouble?

The door downstairs rumbled, and once again it was broken in.

John had his revolver out. Mary, too…both were braced and ready.

Sherlock was unarmed. He slid to the side of the room, out of the immediate line of fire, ready to move into action when he got an opening. If he was lucky they’d be too busy with John and Mary to notice him.

They were there. They were shooting. John and Mary were tumbling—not like corpses, but like trained warriors, moving and shooting at once, hard to track, hard to trace. Sherlock dove in under gunshot, then came up, twisting the first gunman’s arm, taking his revolver—shooting the next man even as he dumped the first, dislocating his shoulder as he did.

He could hear sirens. Good old Anthea. She had to have spotted something—set the forces in motion.

Lestrade—Lestrade was in the room, coming in from behind, clearing his own path as he came. Where had he come fr— Oh. Right. He’d been sleeping down on My’s bed in the basement.

More feet coming up the stairs. MI6—Sherlock recognized familiar faces from former days of glory.

One of the assassins slipped, dodged, broke out the door.

“Catch him!”

No—too late. He was gone.

It was done.

Sherlock looked around. Less than five minutes since the first warning—and the room was a shambles. Furniture knocked around. Bleeding, injured hit men sprawled over the floor. John and Mary comparing memories of what had just happened, reminding Sherlock yet again of how well Mary fit in with their mad mob...

Mikey.

Sherlock spun and raced down the hall, jerking the pen from under the door, sweeping the door open.

There was no one there—no one there, and the curtains fluttered in the breeze.

Sherlock swore, and raced across the room. He looked down the side of the building. No Mikey below. Was that good news? Had they had the place surrounded? Someone there to pick Mikey up if he ran?

He turned and stalked down the hall, just in time to see the escaped hit man dragged in by his limping younger brother, whose mouth was stretched in a grin so wide it might well split his face.

Sherlock roared up to him without slowing, grabbed the collar of the hit man, shoving it into the hands of one of Anthea’s people, then leaned into his brother’s personal space.

“What the hell do you think you were doing?”

My studied his brother—and his eyes lit with mischief. “Well, there we were, in trouble. So I asked myself, ‘What would Sherlock do?’ And the answer was ‘He’d climb out the window and down the bricks and then come back up and join the fight.’ So… I did.”

On the far side of the room first John, and then Mary caught the statement, processed it—and began to laugh.

“Oh, God, he’s nailed you, Sherlock,” John snorted.

“He has not!”

“Has,” Mary joined in. “Perfect. Just perfect.”

“It’s not perfect. It was stupid and reckless and he put himself in danger for no good reason,” Sherlock stormed at them all. “He could have been killed! How am I supposed to protect him, if he goes and acts like that?”

Lestrade was laughing like a hyena, whooping and wailing. John and Mary leaned on each other, giggling helplessly.

Sherlock, furious, turned back to Mikey. “Why did you do that? How am I supposed to protect you if you act like that?”

Mikey studied him, eyes suddenly lost. “Why would you want to?”

Sherlock didn’t even have to think—it came from someplace deep and reflexive and Pavlovian. “What else am I supposed to do? Big brothers take care of little brothers. It’s what we _do_.”

Mikey stared at him.

He stared at Mikey—then spun away, breath suddenly short and shaky.

Neither said anything more.

In Sherlock’s opinion, it was because the unspeakable had already been said.

oOo

Solange was pleased. The Game wasn’t just still on—it had become more interesting.

The boy…she’d studied the boy. She knew his patterns. But he behaved differently out of the bunker—he didn’t behave like his tests suggested he would.

She referred to the data again, and pondered. She could enter the information into the data banks. But she didn’t understand it. It was an anomaly.

She set it aside, and let the Mycroft simulator run on, unaltered.

oOo

My sat in the back of the big black limo, hands clenched between his knees.

“Don’t worry,” Mycroft said. “I warned them. They’ll be ready for you.”

My nodded. The trouble was, he thought, he wasn’t ready for them.

“They’ve built up a lot since I…used to be here,” he said. “Or maybe not. Maybe it was always different here?”

“No—your thread must be very much like here,” Mycroft said. “They’ve built up a lot. But it’s still country out by Mummy and Father’s. Fields. Woods. Streams.”

“Cows, pigs, chickens?” My forced a tight smile. Sherlock had always loved the farm animals—of course, he’d seen them as free lab specimens.

“Yes. Goats, lately. And the Kimberley’s are experimenting in llamas.”

“Llamas? Really?”

“It’s a fad, in my opinion. But who knows—maybe there’s a great future in llama steaks that I’m not aware of.”

My shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t eaten llama.”

Mycroft looked out the window. “I have. Not recently, but there was a time I did some work in Argentina. It’s not bad.”

“Enough to start a new meat industry?”

“I wouldn’t think so. But I’m told my tastes are rather traditional. I like classic British cooking: saddle of lamb, steak and kidney pie, chicken tikka masala.”

My frowned. “What?”

Mycroft sighed. “It’s a joke. A small one. Chicken Tikka Masala was created in England, by Pakistani restaurant owners trying  to satisfy English tastes. Some now consider it the national dish.”

My stared at him, then looked away.

“I did say it was a small joke,” Mycroft pointed out.

My just nodded. Mainly he was trying not to panic.

Mycroft had told him Mummy and Father were in their seventies—which made sense, of course, but when My had last seen them they’d been in their forties. Young.

They were old enough to be his grandparents. Maybe even his great grandparents.

He licked his lips.

The car rolled along. The fields became familiar.

“The oak tree where Sherlock broke his arm the second time is still there.”

“Yes. He broke his arm the fifth time there, too.”

“Five?”

“And that was before he began training with MI6. I’ve lost count of breaks, since then.”

My nodded. That was the Sherlock he knew. Unlike the new Sherlock—the one who was, unsettlingly, his big brother.

He was My Holmes—but everyone was changing what that meant.

The car rolled up and parked on the verge opposite the old house.

It still looked the way it had. My made himself open the door and slide out. He and Mycroft crossed the road together, each jockeying for last-place. Each failed, and they ended up facing the door together.

Mycroft reached out. My noticed his older self’s hand was shaking as he reached out to tap the door. He never got a chance, though: it swung open, and an old woman with white hair and a vivid flowered top swept out, grabbed My, hugged him tight, then pushed him back. She stared at him—and frowned. She rounded on Mycroft.

“What have you done to my boy, Mikey? He’s a wreck! You’re supposed to take care of your brother.”

Both Mycrofts stared. Then My, feeling entirely out of his depth, said, “It’s not his fault, you know.”

“Of course it is,” Mummy snapped. “When you trace it all back to the original issue, it’s always his fault.” She glared at Mycroft, and said, in frustration, “You didn’t have to be the British Government, you know. Now see where it’s got us all. Really, Mikey, I wish you’d think before you went haring off on these reckless starts. Life would be so much easier if you were more like Sherlock, with simple goals and modest ambitions.” She sighed and, and closed her eyes. “But you always were the difficult one.”

Mycroft gritted his teeth. “Yes, Mummy. Can we come in off the stoop, Mummy?”

“Well, of course,” she snapped. “I don’t know why you haven’t all ready.” And she threaded her arm through My’s, and pulled him after her, saying to him just as though he were Sherlock, “Now, I’ve made your favorite dinner—braised beef and mash. You just come in and I’ll make you a nice hot cup of tea, and we’ll talk. Poor thing. You’re safe, now…”

My’s head spun. Apparently thirty years difference and one string to the left changed the world—and now Mummy had decided to treat him like he was Sherlock—the favored son.

He wondered what he thought about that—then he decided: it was downright creepy.


	6. In Search of Lost Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot continues, and the Holmes Boys all have revelations.

The Mycroft simulator and Solange were not getting on, that day. Three times it tried to order a major killing strike. Three times she plugged in more variables.

Yes, more bodies would infuriate Mycroft Holmes and his allies, and would terrify the populace. But to what purpose? Terror alone wasn’t enough. Showing Mycroft Holmes they could beat him wasn’t enough. What was the point?

Winning was the point—the long war, not these petty little battles. Freedom for the common many, not for the elite few. How did thousands more dead—of poison in the reservoirs or carefully timed explosions on the rush-hour tracks or gas in the Tube—how did that further the cause?

It wasn’t enough to beat Mycroft Holmes. It wasn’t even particularly desirable, she thought. Better if they could get Mycroft Holmes to understand—to work _with_ them. What an ally he’d make! If only he were trying to set mankind free, not keep people bound up with a million petty laws and a million petty taxes, with the eyes of state forever on them, watching…

It was all supposed to be about something.

She ran the simulator again. Again she got back a pointless act of mass violence.

She scowled, then began to study the code defining the simulator, mind racing through the thousands of commands, through the interlocking sets of parameters. The stupid thing was missing the obvious—that this wasn’t a single battle, and another single battle, and another after that. It was a war, with aims and ambitions. It was long-arc—like Mycroft Holmes himself was long-arc.

When she concluded the program was incapable of simulating that element of Mycroft Holmes, she began to code.

She’d never done so before; not on this scale. She found herself roaming the net, stealing a scrap of code here, another there, checking structures to determine which would allow her to make the Mycroft simulator better. Putting it all together, creating new patterns—it stretched her in ways her usual work didn’t involve. Moriarty used her for two things: overseeing the Mycroft simulator, and managing the group’s human resources. Most of her coding was simple patch work, refining the miles of code that comprised the mirror-Mycroft. This was different.

This was giving the mirror a soul.

Solange found the task challenging…

oOo

“That’s my little Em,” Mary crooned. “That’s right—nice, soapy flannel on your pretty, round tummy. Yeah-yeah. Bubbles. Aren’t they pretty?”

Baby Em squealed her approval, and pronounced a long, articulate sentence of nonsense syllables, all liquid Ls and humming Ms and big open vowels that sang out in the little bathroom.

Sherlock, hearing, smiled—then frowned.

“What’s wrong?” John asked. “You’ve been tetchy as a cat on mouse-patrol lately.”

“I am once again spending my night here because the doors of Baker Street have been staved in,” Sherlock grumbled. “England is under attack by Moriarty. My brother has been copied. The copy has been used to develop an anti-Mycroft program. And I have been repeatedly called to baby sit my brother’s clueless juvenile doppelganger. A bit of ‘tetchy’ seems only reasonable.” He stalked away from the hallway, where he’d been listening to Mary bathe the baby, and sprawled on John’s sofa. “If anything, it seems entirely too contained a response.”

John paused and looked at Sherlock. His face shifted to the ironic affection that so often typified his response to Sherlock’s melodrama—fondness blended with firm recognition of the man’s failings. “Yeah. Ok. Life sucks and then we die. Aside from that, what’s bugging you?”

Sherlock scowled and flounced into the kitchen, popping the fridge door and hanging inside as though pirate treasure might be found inside. John trailed after and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table, studying his friend.

“Really. What’s wrong? You’re turning into a complete nutter. _Not_ ,” he added, quickly, “that you haven’t always been, mind, but nuttier than usual. Now you’re even making faces over Em, and I _know_ you’re a soft touch for Em. So talk.”

The response from inside the fridge was something close to “mumble-mumble-bloody-Mycroft-mumble.”

John snorted, mouth twisting in a one-sided grin. “So…it’s about your brother…”

“….” Sherlock turned long enough to look out of the fridge and glare, then buried himself back in, prodding gingerly at a leftover casserole.

“Marriage appears to have reduced you to wholesome food and a general lack of bachelor food,” he grumbled.

“Funny thing, that. And so many fewer body parts. About Mycroft…”

Sherlock grabbed an apple and a can of IrnBru and swung back out, preparing to sweep past John back into the sitting room. John, though, caught one elbow.

“Come on, Sherlock. Sit down. Talk.”

“Ordinary people ‘talk.’ Blah-blah, yadda-yadda. I think you’re unable to bear the emptiness of your own brains, so you fill the silences up by wittering on.”

“Says the man who solves mysteries to stay off the drugs he takes because he gets too bored. You’re not bored now. Try talking.”

Sherlock sat, and pouted, putting both the apple and the soda on the table.

John smiled, took the soda, popped the top, and handed it back to Sherlock. He waited.

Sherlock frowned, and looked across the room, for all the world as though he had no idea his hand was curling around the soda and carrying it up to his mouth. He took a long drink without looking at John.

John waited.

“He’s not Mycroft,” Sherlock said. “My—he’s not _my_ Mycroft.”

“You think he’s a fake after all?”

Sherlock’s mouth tightened, and he closed his eyes. After a long moment he said, quietly. “No. I think he’s real.”

“So…the thread he’s from? Maybe it’s a lot different?”

“No…”

John considered asking more questions, then changed his mind. He waited again.

Sherlock said, then, “He’s real. I think…I think he’s probably very much like Mycroft at the same age. He’s just…not _my_ Mycroft. The one in my mind. The one in my memories.”

“Going to have to unpack it, Sherlock. Not the genius, here.”

Sherlock sulked, and drank more soda, and bit the apple viciously. At last he said, angrily, “It means I’m wrong. Somehow I’m wrong about who Mycroft really is.” He glowered across the table. “You will not tell Mycroft I said that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. So—different how?”

Sherlock shrugged and moped and managed to turn a full minute into a choreographed ballet of sighs, twitches, and evasive body language. At last he said, “He looks quite different from the perspective of being almost three decades older, rather than seven years younger.”

“Mmmm?”

“I suppose it’s a matter of greater experience and more precise observation,” Sherlock said, deflecting like mad. “Over the past years I’ve improved my understanding of body language, learned to categorize human inflections and behaviors more precisely, I’ve developed a much broader data base for comparison in my Mind Palace.”

“Mmmmm?”

Sherlock was silent.

John waited.

“He—I never knew he was afraid,” Sherlock finally said. “I thought he knew…I thought he wanted…I thought he meant….” He groped for words, helpless and dismayed. “He’s smaller than I remember. And I didn’t know he was afraid when he protected me. I thought…he’d get so angry. And he was so cold and…” He glared across the table at John. “How was I supposed to know I was…” He stopped then, and stared stormy-eyed across the room.

“Was what?”

Sherlock sighed. “He told me I was a pest. I just thought—he was being mean. Trying to hurt me. It…I didn’t…it never seemed real.”

Mary came and leaned against the door jamb. As she so often seemed to, she understood Sherlock’s inarticulate efforts when John was still groping. “You were seven years younger, and you didn’t think anything you were doing was wrong. Not really. So you figured Mycroft was the one who was wrong. Or mean. Or cold. It never really occurred to you he was a shy kid trying to take care of a pretty challenging kid brother. Did it?”

Sherlock met her eyes, and gave a helpless, frustrated little twitch. “I…  Maybe. Have we heard any more about strikes by Moriarty?”

She let him change the topic. “Not so far. It seems odd. I would have expected them to pound at us, since they have the upper hand.”

Sherlock stood and paced, brow furrowing. “They should. Logically they’re gaining very little by letting it ride right now. They gain some leverage from our uncertainty, but that’s more than offset by the chance to organize and prepare. It’s almost more as though we’ve been given a warning salvo, and then allowed a chance to get ready.”

“Not much like Moriarty.”

Sherlock considered, then said, uneasily, “Rather a lot like Moriarty, actually. It’s a game. What fun playing if your opponent is able to give you his best game?”

“That’s sick, you know,” Mary said, conversationally. “Really, it’s a sick mind that thinks that way.”

Sherlock shot her a long, irked glance. “I think that way.”

She sniggered. “Your point?”

He huffed, but grinned, then. “Very well. I’m peculiar in that respect. But—it’s very odd that Moriarty’s behaving more like its classic self than like, well…like Mycroft. Mycroft doesn’t play the game for the game’s sake alone. Not when lives are at stake. If it’s imitating Mycroft, it should be playing to win. Mycroft only loses or gives up ground as a feint or a realignment.”

“You make it sound like Mycroft can’t lose,” John said. “From what I’ve seen, though, it doesn’t take that much to throw him off. You do it regularly.”

Sherlock sniffed. “He refuses to keep me in the information loop.”

“He’s the British Government. I think he’s supposed to keep you out of the loop at least some of the time,” Mary said, amused. “It’s that whole ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ thing. Need to know?”

Sherlock sniffed, making it quite clear that he considered himself exempt from basic rules of clearance. “I’d be far less likely to step on his toes if he’d explain things.”

“Because apparently ‘Don’t go there, it’s my own project’ is too vague.”

John chuckled at his wife’s comment. “Even when he knows, he does what he wants anyway. Sherlock insists on being a rule unto himself.”

“It’s hardly his place to tell me what to do.”

“Um…so, you don’t ever work for MI6?”

“Not _officially._ It’s almost never _on the books._ ” Sherlock sounded as though that was sufficient explanation for why he himself was under no obligation to follow instructions.

Mary, nodded, and murmured, “And of course, he’s entirely unreasonable to find this a bit frustrating.”

“He’s got more than enough minions,” Sherlock snapped. “I’m not about to be one of them.”

“No. You’re not,” Mary said. “It must be hard to be Big Brother in the Holmes family.” She smiled sweetly, having turned all his attempts to evade the subject back on him.

He closed his eyes—but he said nothing more about his relationship with his brother for the rest of the evening.

oOo

Lestrade was at work.

His _other_ work. The one that had first brought him and Sherlock together. The one that underlay his relationship with Mycroft Holmes.. The one hidden by his Met position. The one where he didn’t have to play Sherlock’s dumb straight man.

All right, Sherlock beat him at terror analysis, too—but only in a very narrow band of skills, and Lestrade beat Sherlock blow for blow in his own areas of expertise. Not that Sherlock liked admitting that Lestrade was the better undercover operative.

It was true, though.

Today he was a longshoreman, fresh from the docks, slipping into a workingman’s pub seamlessly. He didn’t just pass—he fit in. He knew the names. He slapped the right palms. They knew him, here. Some knew him and lied for him. “Yeah, good bloke, Joey. Worked with him back in ’09. I think he’s with Andrews, these days. No? Eh, I can be wrong. Maybe London International. No? Hey, Joey, what company you work for these days? Oh, between gigs? Ok. Sorry. Hadn’t heard.”

By the time Lestrade and his special contacts worked their magic, he was just one of the lads. His people trusted him, too. When he recruited them, he told them upfront what he was, what he could do for them, what he couldn’t. He put his faith in them—and they returned it in kind.

He was a straight arrow. Heart of oak. It only took a few men and women who believed in him to shake the underbelly of London.

“Hey, Dupper—yeah. C’mon over, lemme buy you a pint. Need to talk.”

So they talked, “Joey” and Dupper. “Eric” and Janey. “Thump” and Our Nige.

“Trouble coming. Yeah—like on the news. Bombs. Assassinations. It’s war, only the enemy’s got no face. Half the time the ones who do it are patsies: no idea what they’re doing. No idea for who. That means there’s no one you can be sure isn’t playing the game. No one you can be sure isn’t planting a bomb. I need you to spread the word to the people who keep an eye out. The grannies in their windows, watching the street go by. The kids with nothing better to do than hang around and kick the ball around a bit and listen to people talk. The one’s who’ve been laid off, and are bored and want to feel like they’re doing something. Look for anything—and when you see it—call here.”

Most wouldn’t. Some would.

Lestrade hoped that some would be enough. Then he ducked into a public loo and made like Clark Kent, changing into yet another good bloke no one would notice for anything but his shining smile and his easy stride. A bit of a lad, a bit of a charmer. But nothing special, you know? One in every pub in England…

Sherlock tried, Lestrade thought with a smile. He loved to play act. But when it came down to it? Only John Watson was likely to be impressed. No matter how much Sherlock hated it, this was one place Lestrade’s genius beat his own…

“Hey, Vinnie! Been dog’s years! Yeah, come on over. Lemme buy you a pint…”

oOo

Braised beef wasn’t My’s favorite. The truth was if he had to pick one favorite meal it was the spaghetti that Mummy made with the leftovers from the braised beef—and they weren’t going to be staying long enough to get that.

It wasn’t bad. Mummy put him in Sherlock’s chair, though. “For the baby in the family.” She was fluttering, and My was shattered as his perception of her morphed in and out of “just Mummy” and “who’s this crazy old lady?” Father was too old, too—and had grown even quieter than he had been, a gentle, humming teddy bear to Mummy’s flashing firebird.

“Here, Mikey. You need more potato.”

“Thank you, but I’d rather not.”

“You’re too skinny.”

He’d just begun to feel like his body was sorting itself out, actually—the old juvenile podge just beginning to fade, and a bit of muscle beginning to fill in his chest and thighs. He shook his head, even as Mummy spooned out a heap of gorgeous browned braised potatoes, rich with the broth and with the later, dryer stages of the braising.

He picked at them.

“So, Mikey, what are your plans?” Mummy said. “Uni, of course. What do you want to read for?”

“I was reading for linquistics,” My said.

Mummy and Mycroft both made faces. Mummy said, “Well, but you’re going to have to start over anyway, and now you’ve had a year of linguistics you know what you’re in for. Accounting. It stood you well the first time, and I’ve always thought you’d have been much better off if you’d just dropped the other studies. Accounting isn’t as likely to get you into trouble as linguistics and game theory.”

Mycroft huffed. “Accounting is precisely what got me in trouble, Mummy. I was quite good at forensic accounting. That’s where they first realized I had a useful ability to deduce conspiracies from fragmentary data.” He looked at My. “I do think you may want to rethink your studies, but only because the fields have changed so much—and, as Mummy said, you’ll be starting over in any case. Give yourself some time, and if you want to discuss it with me, I’ll be glad to tell you how it all turned out the first time around.”

“The better to avoid the same pitfalls,” Mummy grumbled, then looked at My. “I do hope you don’t fall into the traps Mikey did, Mike…” She paused then, looking back and forth between them.

In unison they said, “My” and “Mycroft.”

Mummy huffed. “What’s wrong with ‘Mike.’ I always liked ‘Mike.’”

Both glared at her.

She sighed. “So _difficult._ ”

“Sherlock was easy?” Mycroft said, exasperated. “Sherlock spent his entire childhood—no, his entire life in trouble.”

“Well, of course he did,” Mummy snapped. “Always trying to live up to you. He just wanted to be like you, Mikey. And you never wanted to spend time with him, or take him with you…and when you did, it was always trouble. Letting him go into MI6 with you—really!”

“I could hardly stop him,” Mycroft snapped back. “He was of age, Mummy.”

My felt a shudder run through him, and the old, familiar push of misery and frustration. There he was—almost fifty, and still sniping with Mummy. And about Sherlock. His life was still about Sherlock, and about how he wasn’t as good as Sherlock, and how he got Sherlock into trouble, and how he didn’t love Sherlock enough.

As they bicked, he folded his napkin and slipped out of his chair, drifting away from the table. He saw Father catch him at it, but he ignored the raise brows and the little nod indicating he should sit back down. He shook his head, and was gone, hurrying up the stairs to his old room.

It was changed. Old, beloved books were gone. Most of what he loved was gone, actually. What remained was his old bed, still covered in a bright plaid coverlet; a small selection of rather boring looking textbooks; his desk and chair. Little more.

He sat on the bed, feeling battered. Nothing was left. What was left looked old. Nearly thirty years had passed; fabrics had faded and grown brittle. Everything looked shabbier and more dim than when he’d been here last, mere months before.

He curled around himself, leaning low over his knees, forehead pressed hard to bony joints, arms wrapped around his shins. This wasn’t home, any more. _His_ Mummy and Father were as dead as if they’d been bombed, and what was left was someone else’s grandmother and grandfather. His entire family was dead, in some sense—all transformed by time into something alien and disturbing.

He was an orphan surrounded by family who thought they owned him, knew him, understood him. Only he wasn’t who they thought, quite, and the relationships they’d once had were all altered by time and change.

“It’s good to see you again, M…My.” Father stood in the doorway, his dark blue eyes lingering on him.

He forced himself to sit up. “Um…thank you, sir?”

Father gave a rueful laugh, and sat in the desk chair, looking at his revenant son.  “You didn’t used to call me ‘sir.’ ‘Father’ was always stuffy enough without tossing in ‘sir.’”

“I didn’t know you didn’t like being called ‘Father.’”

“It was your mother’s thing. She wanted you both to respect me.” He gave a crooked grin. “She worried. You’re both so clever, and I never have been. I think she hoped it would buy me a bit more honor than it ever did.”

My shivered, longing for his own Father back. “You were…a good father,” he said, not knowing what else to offer. “When I was captured, I wished you were there, sometimes. When I wasn’t being glad they hadn’t take all of you, too.” And when he wasn’t worried they’d killed his family…

“It must have been very difficult. I’m sorry you had to endure that.”

My blinked and looked away. “I was all right. They were mostly boring.”

Father sighed. “You always were the quiet one. Poor Mummy—she never did know how to deal with that. She’s more like Sherlock. Dramatic. If she feels something, you know it, mostly. She thinks she’s very reserved, you know.” His eyes twinkled.

My looked back, disbelieving. “No.”

“Oh, yes. She’s quite sure she and Sherlock are simple, forthright, but phlegmatic.”

“What does she think I am, then?” he asked, bitterness escaping.

“Confusing.” His father sighed, and said, “She doesn’t read people all that well, your mother. She tries—she deduces a lot. But she has a hard time with subtleties and reserve. It’s rather like dealing with the slightly deaf—you have to shout or they think you’re mumbling, or miss that you’re talking at all.” He tapped his ear. “Had to start using hearing aids almost a decade ago. It was the first time I think I really understood that your mother honestly doesn’t ‘hear’ what the rest of us are saying. Sherlock she always understood, because he shouts, just like her.”

“She never wanted to know, though,” Mycroft said, coming to stand in the door in his own turn. “I tried and tried, and she didn’t want to know.”

Father bowed his head. “She tried, Mike. We both did. They don’t hand out degrees in parenting, and even if they did the children you actually get would confound all your theoretical knowledge. I promise, we tried. You were so quiet, and willing to help—you disappeared into the warp and web of things so well. And then there was Sherlock, and we needed all the help you could give us.”

My was about to fight back—it was one of the first chances he’d ever had to battle the norms of his family. But Mycroft shook his head, catching his eye. Then Mycroft put his hand on Father’s shoulder.

“You did well. We’re both adult, and independent, and serving our country. There are a lot of parents who can’t say that much.”

Father nodded, and smiled, grateful and optimistic and adaptable, as ever. “You’re a good boy, Mikey.”

“Mycroft. Really, please…Mycroft?”

Father shrugged. “I always forget.”

“You really need to remember now, if only to keep me and My straight,” Mycroft said.

Father looked at My, and shook his head, rueful and amazed. “It’s a wonder, you know. A marvel and a wonder.”

“Yes, it is,” Mycroft said, eyes far harder to read than Father’s.

Father cocked his head, and said, “But—to me you’ll both always be our Mikey.”

“Sherlock was Billy…you made that shift.”

Father laughed. “Sherlock was the most unconvincing Billy ever born.” He shook his head, ruefully. “Mummy loved that name, because it was like ‘Mikey.’ You both had distinctive names, but you could both just fit in—go in disguise. But the minute you started work for the government you switched to Mycroft…and Sherlock wasn’t about to be beaten. And the thing was, he was there every day, insisting—and it fit him so perfectly.” Father looked gently up at his older son. “You’re so very much a Mike,” he said. “Such a kindly name.”

Mycroft frowned and blushed at the same time, and mumbled that it was probably time to go help Mummy clean up. Father insisted, though, that they should stay upstairs, and let him take care of it. “We’ve got it down to an art,” he said, smiling. “Twenty years and more with each other alone does that.”

He slipped out of the room.

Mycroft looked at My. “I’m sorry. They’re still—just Mummy and Father. Good and bad. But not that different from when you knew them.”

My shivered, tried to respond—and choked on it, freezing.

The two stared at each other, My desperate to scream that it was all different—all changed, all taken away from him.

Mycroft hesitated, then muttered something under his breath. The next thing My knew, he was wrapped in long arms, pulled close.

“It’s all right. It’s all right, Sher…My. Really, I’ll take care of you.”

“That’s what we always do, isn’t it?” My said, feeling frantic. “Take care of people.”

He felt his older self shrug. “I…don’t know anything else to do,” he said, helplessly. “It’s all that ever seems to help.”

My felt the shiver run through Mycroft, and understood it…the pain and uncertainty turned inward, the panicked sense that there was nothing to do but keep on making tea and handing out blankets and keeping calm in the face of chaos. He wrapped his arms as tightly around Mycroft as Mycroft had hiss wrapped around My.

“It’s all right,” My said. “It’s all right. We’re going to be ok.”

And if the memory of Sherlock, all tears and terror, lay between them—each had to admit Little Brother had been good practice. They’d both learned a lot about dealing with pain when trying to cope with him in all his melodramatic splendor.


	7. The Widening Gyre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok. It may be another week or so before I can get another installment of this done--but at least I did get an update in. 
> 
> I am sorry you have to wade through a mess of mini-sections of original characters, but it's necessary to maintain what's going on plot-wise. I promise, it ends with Known Characters being even a bit lovable.

 

Our Nige had been a plumber all his working life. Member of his union in good standing. Voted straight-ticket Labor right up the line. Wouldn’t even consider the Lib Dems. Labor, that was him. His work was shit—really! He loved that joke—had from the time he’d first finished his apprenticeship and passed his City and Guilds tests. He’d bought himself a pint, after, at the same pub he still went to of an evening, and the barkeep had poured him another on the house, and then said it. “For you, lad, ‘cause your job’s shit!” He’d been about to pound the bastard when the joke had clicked, and he’d laughed almost till he cried.

Good times, eh? Good times…

That had been a good thirty years gone, now. He’d been a master plumber with his own shop for twenty, and never a day he regretted it. Shit or no shit, people would always need plumbers, and they’d always pay a bright, shiny penny for one when they needed him. He’d tried to get his kids to follow in his wake, he had: train up in the trade, take over the business some day. The boys weren’t having any of it: Jamie’d gone on to become a journalist—out of work, now, of course. His last spot at a magazine had folded a year gone. He freelanced, now, and he was living up in his old room. And Ben? Yeah. He’d gone into investing.

It was Sheila who’d gone into plumbing, bless her. Handed over the down payment on her own house five years ago. Took over the business from Our Nige two years later. Made a better living than either of the boys, and that was in spite of three tads of her own and a husband no more use than Jamie and Ben. She was a good old girl, his Sheila, and she let her old Da keep his hand in when it suited him.

Which was how he happened to overhear those two young idjits in the basement of the house in Chelsea talking about planting a bomb….

He didn’t know what he’d have done if he hadn’t run into Thump just a few days before. Thump Donnelly, yeah—a sharp fellow. Clever. In and out of the pub for years, and Our Nige knew him better than he suspected Thump realized. Not a longshoreman, Thump—no. Convincing, but Our Nige’s Da had been a longshoreman, and his brothers, and his old mate Tommy. One night Thump had said something that didn’t ring right, and Our Nige had asked around.

Then he’d asked around some more. And some more. A plumber knew all sorts. It took him some time, and he wasn’t sure for years after he made his guess. But then he’d sold the business to Sheila and found himself with too much time to watch the telly, just about the time that Sherlock fellow had jumped, and he’d seen a face he knew, with a name he didn’t. A copper’s name.

Since then, the few times he’d seen Thump he’d watched what he said. He had nothing against an undercover copper: he figured they did more good than harm. But a plumber knew all sorts, and learned secrets. Some of them were none of Thump’s business. In spite of that, he trusted Thump. More or less. Enough that when the man had come through asking questions and throwing out murmured warnings and requests, he’d listened.

He’d listened hard. He was too young to remember the Great War, but his Mum and Da had remembered. And Our Nige had grown up during the worst years of the IRA attacks.

He knew what bombs do to a city.

People thought the English were soft. They thought they were prim and stuffy and spineless. They were wrong.

After he’d finished repairing the water boiler, been paid, and driven away, Our Nige started looking for a good spot to park. As soon as he found one, he pulled over, dug in his pocket and took out his worn leather wallet and his mobile, flipped through the papers and cards he kept in the back section until he found the scrap of paper with the number Thump had written down, and he dialed. A moment later he said, “Yes. This is Nige Bailey, of Bailey’s Pots and Pipes. I’d like to report a couple bombers, yeah?”

oOo

Anthea sat at her desk, feeling like she had been wired into a vast computer network—one that extended beyond MI6 and MI5; beyond the official government servers and systems; out into the broad world. She was just one little bit of massive computerized brain.

She was, however, the critical part—at least here, and now. She was the part of the brain that decided things.

She reviewed the reports from the emergency phone lines they’d set up, including the report dialed in by Our Nige. They’d been coming in from all around London—all around England. In the face of the bombs, old eyes grew newly sharp and alert. Young eyes hid wariness. Old memories passed on, and England came on alert—keeping calm. Carrying on…and unnamed Legions “doing their bit for the war effort.”

She sent Mycroft a voice message. “Over twenty Moriarty pawns brought in over the past twenty-four hours. Most of them no more than dupes receiving the bombs from strangers. Most thinking they were either fake—for pranks—or part of some vital libertarian act of protest. Oh—except for two completely mental nutters who thought they were helping bring back absolute monarchy. Like Her Majesty wants the grief at her age… In any case, Lestrade’s methods are working—I’ve kept our agents out on the streets spreading the word.” She hung up, then, and returned to her work, only looking up when the slim, slight man in the hipster threads and the clunky hipster glasses slipped into the room.

She smiled. “He’s out of the office right now, Q.”

Q frowned. “He’s also not answering his phone.”

“Did you use the emergency number?”

“No. Not an emergency. Quite. Exactly. I mean—it’s not up there with a sniper preparing to take out the new PM.” His voice was grim, though, and his eyes dark and haunted.

“Bad, though,” she said, not asking, but stating.

“Pretty much ballsed-up, yeah.”

She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. “Report, Q.”

“We’ve been hacked by Moriarty.”

She flinched. “Bugger.” She took another calming breath, not opening her eyes. “You’ve scrubbed him out of the system, though, right?”

“Um…” His voice was wry and grim. “I don’t think we can.”

She opened her eyes, then, and looked into his. Unlike his cousins, he was short for a man—slightly shorter than she was. He had brown eyes. He was casual and relaxed in ways they never were. But like them he was brilliant—and like them, he could meet your eye with power and conviction. Sometimes that was soothing. But now? No. Not when all that power and conviction suggested the worst.

She swallowed.. “We’re fucked, then?”

He cocked his head, grimaced, and said, “Yeah. Pretty much.”

eShe shivered, and began work out strategies for contacting her boss that did not involve phones or computers or anything being said where any camera might see her or mic pick up her words…

Yeah, she thought, fucked. Really, really fucked.

oOo

Babies made the most amazing sounds, Solange thought, as she listened to little Em. The infant’s voice raced up and down scales without stopping to acknowledge individual notes. She gurgled and babbled and crooned and cooed, and did all sorts of other things Solange wasn’t familiar with. And Mary and John and Sherlock—they were fascinating, as they played with the baby.

Solange had access to enough psych evaluations of all three adults to fill a small lorry. She knew every kink in their conscious and unconscious mind. She knew the perverse images John Watson saw in Rorschach tests, and that Mary’s reflexive response to “hit” was “blueberries,” for some reason unknown to anyone, including her evaluators, who had considered it peculiar in the extreme. What she did not know, from all of this, was how it all added together in a way that led to John Watson flying his daughter around their sitting room as he made sputtering wet “airplane engine” noises—or how Sherlock and Mary had decided to join the flight. Sherlock did an unusually good jet-engine whine—Solange compared the sound to an actual recording, and was impressed. Mary had chosen to be a helicopter, and she kept saying, “Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup.”

Little Em squealed more, and laughed.

It was amazing. It was intriguing. It left her wondering what sudden, secret reactions might be hidden in the miles of code that defined the Mycroft Simulator. What if the boy Mycroft didn’t add up to what they thought he did? What if they’d got all the details right, but the sum dead wrong?

The notion pleased her. She had found herself more and more uneasy with the campaign the Moriarty had under way. She wasn’t sure who she trusted les. Her superiors contacted her in flashing, goal-oriented spurts, demanding this action and that, insisting on her reviewing their member files over and over to put together new teams of pawn, dupes, and the occasional actual player. They seemed to have no long-term intention, though, but to sow chaos. Solange was unable to imagine not being inclined to libertarianism—but true anarchy seemed alien to her. Freedom, yes. Havok? Not so much.

And the Moriarty Program: it wasn’t what she’d thought. The more she explored the more she found some total idiot had been tampering with the core personality in ways she found suspect. What was the good of an expert program to emulate Mycroft Holmes if you then dumped in a mess of imperatives and limits that kept it from actually behaving like Mycroft? It was blocked from long-term planning. It was blocked from reproducing a number of the moral paradigms that had been worked out for the boy Mycroft.

Worse, she had Mycroft Holmes’ own psych evaluations, now—built up over a long career in MI6. Quarterly assessments. Evaluations after missions. Ongoing preventive therapy and, yes, therapy aimed at ameliorating trauma, too. She raced through the files, comparing them to those patterned after boy Mycroft, and concluded that experience altered behavior. The Mycroft Holmes who ran England as the _eminence grise_ , the shadow monarch, was not the same Mycroft Holmes who’d spent months solving game puzzles and filling in psychiatric questionnaires.

She considered calling her superiors—but she didn’t trust them. She knew how Moriarty was structured: power was a matter of precedence and player status and genius, but authority was almost non-existent within the organization, as was responsibility and structure. It made the group terribly hard to control—but equally hard to rely on.

In so many ways, she thought, they relied on her for that. Their steady lieutenant, there regardless of changes in the power above or the pawns below. Solange, who found answers, planned missions, built teams, sorted the data, watched the group as a whole, where even the powers above her had little sense of what the real sources of Moriarty were.

No. She trusted the limited, messed up Moriarty Simulator more than she trusted her superiors. At least about this. What she needed was for the Simulator to work better, know more, and work with her more closely. Together they could, just possibly, sort out this insanity. She wanted freedom—but she was damned if she could see how freedom was served by hundreds dead, buildings destroyed, or governments and economies destabilized.

She returned to her earlier project, coding in new commands, stripping out old ones, building layer after layer of new paradigms to modify the core behaviors put in place to copy boy Mycroft—layers that would shift the Simulator closer to the thoughts and methods of the Mycroft who ruled MI6. She  linked the Simulator to the data she was sweeping in from the MI6 network—a vast web of data and information. She tied it all to her own system, working to integrate them.

She felt powerful. She felt, for the first time, like she was allowed to choose.

As she worked, the sound of a baby laughing continued, and three adults kept on imitating flying machines…badly. Solange was delighted. This, now—this was what life was all about.

oOo

The man was one of the highest ranking Moriarty players…and he was uneasy. Their Paris control hadn’t reported any new major missions from the Mycroft Simulator in almost a week, now. Instead everything he’d received from that server had focused on small actions, feints, scare tactics, and ordinary, plebian bombing attempts—most aimed at unoccupied buildings and open spaces.

He’d checked three times in the past three days. Three times the response had come back, “No. No new orders for you. Mike-Sim exploring alternate strategies. Further information as it comes in: Solange.”

He picked up his desk phone, and punched in a number. “Gorky?”

“Yes?” The voice was female, but the man didn’t trust that. Voice mod equipment was cheap and common these days.

“How secure is Solange?”

“Secure.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Look, trust me. Solange we can count on.”

“She can’t have been turned?”

Gorky started to laugh.

“What?” the man asked, annoyed. “It’s possible.”

“No,” Gorky said. “It’s not possible. Solange will never turn. She’s been…conditioned. She can no more turn than Pavlov’s dog could refuse to drool.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain,” Gorky said.

The man sighed. “It’s just there hasn’t been any new mission—nothing of any scope.”

“I figured the Mycroft Simulator was gaming them—playing on their nerves. God knows the original has the steel balls to play a game like that. See who blinks first.” There was a soft chuckle, then Gorky said, “You’re not going to blink, are you?”

“No. No, I’m not going to blink.”

He hung up, then, and stared out his office window out over the Thames as it ran past the Palace of Westminster. Someday, if everything went well, he thought, he’d rule this land. Petty little weasels like Mycroft Holmes would be nothing. But it all depended on the Moriarty network. It depended on the chaos winning—for just a while.

And, damn it, the man thought, he wasn’t sure they were winning. He really wasn’t sure.

oOo

My sat in the corner of Baker Street yet again, listening to his elders mutter and debate and even quarrel. It seemed as though the entire core team had made Sherlock’s home their backup headquarters since the news had come down that the computers of the British Government had been hacked into and in some mysterious way woven into Moriarty’s own system. Mycroft and Sherlock and John and Mary and Lestrade were there, but also Anthea and Q and several others from MI6.

Hardly any of it made proper sense to My. Computers had come a long way since the time he belonged in. He’d been interested in computers all his life—they’d been science fiction becoming real before his very eyes. But the science fiction story they’d told in the years since he last read Heinlein and Asimov and Blish and Clarke was not the story he’d expected. He muddled forlornly through their argument, his own mind churning up references to the Three Laws of Robotics, and Star Trek-version engrams, and computers that went crazy when you said illogical things to them, and robots that played detective…

None of that pertained, apparently. Computers turned out to be powerful, but not dramatic.

“If they’re connected to us, can we trace the connection back to the source and make it work two ways?” My asked, during a gap in the discussion.

Q said dismissively, “Not relevant,” then stopped and frowned, considering. Others started to fill in the silence, and he raised his hand. “Maybe,” he said, after a bit of consideration. “Not necessarily the way you think. The way you think we’ve already tried, and it didn’t work. But—“ He hummed under his breath, then looked at Mycroft. “I need to talk to my people, but I think I can write some ET-phone-home code, but break it up. Include commands that will only link the whole virus together after they’re in Moriarty’s system. That might get it past the firewall. Once it was in, it would call back and build a new link that we’d control. At the least, maybe we could spy on them while they spy on us.”

Mycroft nodded. “Good. Do it. Any other ideas?”

“What are expert programs, now,” My asked, feeling a bit chuffed that his question had prompted a useful idea for Q. “They started out as AI research.”

“They still are,” Q said, more patient and interested now that talking to My had proven useful. “But I think AI is less fantasy these days than it was when you would have known about it. Less likely to imagine we can churn out Genuine People Personalities. The only reason we name our computers and robots is for the reason we name our cars—it amuses us. They’re not people.”

“Oh,” My said. “That’s too bad. But—look, if expert programs are just—well—software…then they’re not smart, really. Fast and precise, but not intuitive or creative. Right?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s really just a big database with a sorting program?”

“Well, a bit more than that. But—roughly.”

“So someone’s got to give commands. And someone’s got to oversee the results. And…”

“Yes.” Q gave a bright, amused little grin, then said, “Your point?”

“It’s just—you’ve all been saying that Moriarty’s so dangerous because the group is…distributed. That’s the word you used right? It’s diffuse? Amorphous?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, eyes focusing on his younger self.

“Well,” My said, “If they’ve got to have an expert program, and someone to oversee how it runs, and someone to process orders and translate them into machine language, and so on—they’ve got at least one aspect of their organization that’s centralized…and right now, that’s their ‘brain.’ To work like Mycroft, they’ve had to turn into MI6. And hacking into your systems and trying to take over your resources is only going to make it worse, because they need that centralized command system to process everything—the new data from our side, the Mycroft program itself, and then their own organization. Because they do need to command their own organization. I don’t know how they did it before this, but right now they command their organization through the Mycroft program and through the people who run it.”

The group assembled stared at him, faces twisted in varying degrees of fascination. When Q gave that bright, pixie-ish smile, something in My let go for the first time since he’d woken in a cave. The young head of Q Department looked at Mycroft, and said, in a laughing voice, “By Jove, Holmes, I think he’s got it.” Then he giggled.

My, recognizing a cultural quote for once, giggled too. “The rain in Spain also stays mainly on the plain,” he quipped, then beamed at everyone. “So—is it useful?”

Mycroft and Q murmured together, then Q turned to My. “It may be. We’ll see. But it’s interesting.”

“It’s also a very sharp strategic insight,” Mycroft said. “If nothing else, it increases the potential benefits of a tactic we’d considered: if we’re hacked, we may be forced to function amorphously, like Moriarty. I’d considered that a catastrophe—but it may not be. I know more about operating like Moriarty than Moriarty really knows about pretending to be me. Even with the expert program.”

“Good catch,” Lestrade called from the far side of the room.

“Very clever,” Q added.

John and Mary were smiling at him. Sherlock, while not smiling, was studying him with brooding fascination. My felt his chest swell, and he grinned back at the group.

For the first time in a long time, he felt…useful. Clever. Even just a bit brilliant.

He could get used to that.

oOo

Sherlock stood in the sitting room in front of the window, playing Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto, letting the edgy, restless music capture his own nervous tension. Upstairs the boy was sleeping. Here, though, Sherlock was alone, and could try to think, and try to correct and repair his broken understanding of his life.

His entire life…

His arm shot authoritatively along, mastering the tetchy, twitchy bowing. His fingers raced over the fingerboard, establishing the notes. His mind, as rapid and as forceful, raced through his memories, trying to sort them and adjust them in light of new understanding. He could have gone on all night, if he hadn’t heard the sniffle by the doorway.

He stopped and turned.

Apparently the boy was _not_ upstairs, asleep.

According to John, no one was inclined to be upstairs asleep when Sherlock was in a playing mood. How was it he always forgot that?

“I’m told that if you sleep in the basement flat it’s not so loud,” he said, not quite apologizing.

The boy shrugged. “I wasn’t really managing to fall asleep even before you started playing,” he said. “May I get some milk?”

“No. We’re out,” Sherlock said, then added gloomily, “I’m always out, since John left. He was useful. He always remembered to get the milk.”

The boy’s eyes lit, and Sherlock’s already too turbulent mind cascaded, tumbling image after image of Mycroft through his memories. That laughter he’d always assumed was judging and righteous…

“You think I’m funny,” he growled, not sure if he was accusing or merely confirming.

The boy shrugged his bony shoulders. “You’re still so… _Sherlock_ ,” he said. “You always were more aware of people in terms of what they did for you—or failed to do for you. It’s just funny to know you think of Doctor Watson in terms of whether he remembered to buy the milk.”

“That’s not the only reason I miss him,” Sherlock said, feeling a bit insulted—and entirely failing to notice he’d admitted to the boy what he’d not been willing to say so concretely to anyone else in all the world, not even John. “He’s my best friend. And he was a good roommate, if you can get past all the silly rules he thought people were supposed to follow.”

“Like?”

“Not keeping specimens in the refrigerator.”

The boy tried not to laugh, and failed somewhat. Adult Mycroft would not have failed. Boy Mycroft, fought back a snigger, choking slightly, and having to pinch his mouth tight. His eyes were brilliant with laughter, though.

Sherlock, to his surprise, smiled back, and gave a snorty sort of chuckle. “He hated when I did the project with the thumbs.”

At that the boy gave up and laughed outright. When he finally stopped he smiled at Sherlock. “I’m so glad you stayed crazy. At least one of us got it right.” If there was a trace of resentment and frustration in his voice, it wasn’t aimed at Sherlock. All Sherlock detected was a sweet fondness.

“I thought you hated me crazy,” he grumbled.

“Well, when I was supposed to be keeping you safe, yes.”  My grinned, teeth flashing, freckles shifting as his smile crinkled his nose and tightened his cheeks. “Trying to keep you out of trouble was like trying to keep a cat out of tuna.”

Sherlock smirked, and put on his best smug face. “Shouldn’t have tried in the first place.”

“Like I had a choice,” My said, a bit wearily.

Sherlock considered that. “You could have rebelled, you know. They couldn’t _make_ you be my nanny.”

My’s brows drew down. “But—Billy, you’d have been dead by the time you were ten if I hadn’t!”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

  
“I’m not.” My’s voice was dry, then, and sincere. “I saved your life the first time when you were two and I was nine. You climbed out of your crib and tried to crawl down stairs. Only you didn’t know how to go down, yet, and you almost rolled down. I caught your nappy just in time.”

“Hardly a dramatic rescue.”

My just arched his brows.

Sherlock scowled. “First time?”

“Second time was when you unlocked the back door of the car and opened it while we were on the M-6. I grabbed you before you fell out.”

Sherlock remembered hearing about that one. He studied My, eyes dark and brooding. “And how many times did you hit me?” he grumbled.

My shrugged, blushed, but refused to look away. “Probably too often. How many times did you hit me or pinch me first?”

Sherlock had the grace to blush in turn. Ready to change the topic, he held out the violin. “You still played when you were…. I mean, you do still play. Right?”

My looked warily at the violin. “If you can call it playing. I was never any good.”

Sherlock stopped, surprised. “You were great.”

“You always said it sounded like cats vomiting.”

“I was your kid brother,” Sherlock pointed out. “It’s mandatory to say things like that.”

My looked at him, then grinned crookedly. “Ah. I always thought you meant it.”

“I always thought you meant I was an idiot.”

My shrugged. “At first I was afraid you were. It was years before I realized that you were still fast compared to everyone else.”

Sherlock glowered at him. “Didn’t stop you saying it.”

“Didn’t stop you acting like an idiot, either,” My grumbled. “Scared me half to death. And—“ He stopped, and looked at Sherlock. “I don’t want to get into this fight,” he said. “It was a stupid fight when you were seven and I was fourteen and you fell out of the apple tree naked because…I never knew because why. But it was still a stupid fight. It’s stupider now.”

“You always were the clever one,” Sherlock said, voice in some odd place between tart and tender. “Come on. Let’s make tea and see if there are any biscuits in the cupboard.” He tucked the violin back into its case—and when the boy crossed near, he did something he had never thought to do in all his life. He put his arm around his brother’s shoulders, and left it there as they crossed into the kitchen together to put together a midnight snack.


	8. The General's Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is very short. Not really a "proper" chapter. It's also dark as hell--but is necessary counterpoint to the lighter and happier things before, and to come. 
> 
> Mycroft, on the same night as Sherlock and My raiding the kitchen for midnight snacks. 
> 
> Uneasy lies the head that doesn't wear the crown, but that might as well....

The fifth time through the notes from that day’s meeting, Mycroft finally had to admit he was too tired to keep on. He slipped the pocket watch out of his weskit pocket, flipped the cover open, and checked the Roman numerals. It was, he saw, half-past III. He slipped off his reading glasses—putting them properly away in their case and tucking the case into its place in the top drawer. He heaved a heavy sigh and began the stately, slow process of organizing his desk for the next day: files in his attaché case, backup information copied to two different thumb drives—one of which he placed in his office safe, the other which also went into the attaché. He closed his laptop and put it in its proper place in a second safe on the far side of the room. He looked at his watch again. Ten till IV.

So damned late. He yawned, stretched, left the little home office in his Pall Mall flat, and locked it behind him. He flipped out his mobile, calling the security team that kept watch over the entire building.

“Yes, Anson. Me. Going to bed, now. Yes, the usual—if the motion detectors pick up anything near my work rooms before…God. Before eight tomorrow? If they pick up motion, it’s either not me—or I’ve finally lost all sanity and should be shot as a mercy killing. Even I need to sleep…”

He cut through the kitchenette and poured himself a glass of wine from a bottle of what that would be vinegar if he didn’t use it up. Or so he told himself. He looked longingly at a chicken leg left over from a previous dinner, and reminded himself how long he had to spend on the treadmill to run the calories off. He staggered to his bedroom, cutting straight to the bath and shower.

Only when he was ready for bed—showered, teeth brushed, tucked into light cotton pyjamas—did he stop to look at himself in the mirror as he ran a glass of water to take a sleeping pill and his nightly anti-anxiety pill. The reflection made him want to swear and rage.

It was not fair, he thought. Most people got to middle age without any worse **_memento mori_** than the ordinary gaggle of youngsters rushing along in their wake. At worst they were haunted by their own children. Who in all the world but Mycroft Holmes had ever had to weigh his life and his mortality against his own younger self?

He thought of the boy that day, mind struggling to evaluate him without the confirmation bias that came with feelings. He failed.

That face. That lanky, soft body. Those hands—too big. The nose—enormous. More freckles than seeds on a strawberry—and hair so vivid it demanded attention. Wide mouth. And the eyes...longing for approval, and giving that longing away to anyone who’d look twice. Lighting up like a beacon when he’d been able to contribute anything… When the team had given him their approval, the boy had shone so bright…

He looked at his own face. Nose bigger than ever, of course. That would keep growing till the day he died, if he understood correctly. Lips thinner and greyer, bracketed with solemn creases, set in what seemed like a perpetual sober line when he wasn’t forcing a diplomatic demi-smile. Hair? Dark and thinning, with his hairline racing toward his crown far too quickly. Body? Firmer than the boy’s, because by God he worked at it. Between his profession and the aching vanity of approaching age…

It was humiliating to admit to himself that he couldn’t bear the thought of the young men in the few discreet clubs he dared enter looking at him as a Daddy. He couldn’t bear the thought of the younger agents coming up behind him laughing at the old duffer going wide-bummed and soft behind his desk. So he watched his diet and he ran on the treadmill and he stretched and did calisthenics and was absolutely committed to his weekly martial arts training session. Because Mycroft Holmes was willing to grow old, but not willing to grow pitiful.

It only took one clear-eyed look at My, though, to realize that the whole fantasy itself was pitiful. He would grow old, and pitiful, and no amount of time on the treadmill could stop it.

He traced a liver spot that had recently bloomed high on one cheekbone.

Time flies; like clouds, like ships, like shadows. There and then gone.

My looked at him, and those young eyes told him what he’d become. Old. Cold. Powerful and alone. He tried to recall why he’d begun this career, but before he could convince himself of high ideals or profound sense of duty, he saw My’s face, radiant at having been clever—having been seen to be clever. Having been praised by his elders….

That, of course, he thought, was why, in the end. He’d been My, once. Shy and uncertain. Sure he was smart, but not sure enough in the right ways to be confident. Worried that just as ordinary people were too slow for him, he’d prove too slow for _real_ geniuses. His recruiters hadn’t had to offer him more than My had received today: a room full of people impressed at his acumen. He’d have done anything for the praise. Adding in duty and responsibility and even whispers of glory had been gilding the lily. Not that his recruiters hadn’t slapped the shiny gilt on everything in sight anyway.

I loved every shiny counterfeit gleam, he thought. And here I am, now.

His latest Prime Minister was dead on his watch. His nation under attack, with hundreds in hospital, and hundreds more in coffins. His Queen was in hiding. His agency—his entire government—infiltrated by the enemy. His secret service teams were so compromised he had no idea how to protect his plans but to do what he was doing—stripping down to the small handful he could be sure were true to Queen and Country—and to him.

Not that they loved him. But they were true.

So. Lestrade, of course: Lestrade he would trust to the gallows foot and beyond. Anthea. Q. He’d trust them with his life, his honor, and his nation’s defense.

Sherlock? Sherlock might be making progress with young My… Mycroft was impressed in a bittersweet way that Sherlock seemed to be adjusting his understanding of young My, sorting out that the boy wasn’t what he had remembered. But Mycroft had been given no reason to hope that softening and adjustment would apply to him—nor should it. The foundations of his and Sherlock’s prickly relationship might be rooted in childhood misunderstandings on both sides, but there were thirty years of mutual offenses and disappointments between them that didn’t exist between Sherlock and My. There was more history between Sherlock and Mycroft than more than twice My’s total years.

But, in spite of that, Mycroft knew Sherlock would be true. Erratic, maddening, hurtful, reckless—and true. And with him he’d bring that annoying, but faithful little Rottweiler of a former Army doctor, and his deadly little wife.

And then there was My.

It was a small team to face Armageddon. But at least it was a band of heroes.

Mycroft shivered, and hoped he wasn’t going to lead them to a final, horrible defeat. He hoped he wasn’t going to oversee the final days of his nation—his civilization. Moriarty had the tools to topple nations, now: not just Mycroft's England. To reach up from hell and drag them all down into the pit.

He turned from the mirror, turning out the light. He walked through the dark to his bed. He slipped into the clean, cold sheets. He set the alarm for eight. He lay down, and closed his eyes.

He slept, in the silent room, in the silent flat, in the secure building, guarded but alone.


	9. Casting Dice for Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit longer. I have an unexpected little window of oportunity, and wanted to use it.
> 
> Most of this is plot-movement, though it looks like talking heads. It's not. It's movement toward a goal. Some of it is also character development at the same time. If I were not so tired, I'd have written one more section with Solange, but I'm exhausted, like Mycroft, and think I will watch another episode of Castle and then crash for the night.

The man in the Palace of Westminster had reached his limit. They had the upper hand. All his own private informers in government assured him that the shadow network Mycroft Holmes had built and commanded was in tatters; the official, daylight government even more so as they struggled with fear and uncertainty and the normal chaos that followed a high-ranking assassination. Trust was almost non-existent. Paranoia was rife. No one—no, not even Mycroft Holmes—had any idea what was coming next or how to guard against it.

Now was the time for Moriarty to strike, and strike hard. It was a target-rich field. The Prime Minister was dead. What if they assassinated the Deputy Prime Minister mere days after he’d been sworn into his predecessor’s position? The Queen—or Charles. Or better yet, William and Kate and the babies. And Harry… the entire presumed future of the monarchy, gone. Lady Smallwood—she was proving far too effective holding the nation together from her position as the Home Secretary. What about icons—people of no power but of great sentimental worth. The actors, the musicians, the writers who had become Great Britain’s unofficial ambassadors to all the world. What would it mean to the nation for Moriarty to take down Ian McKellan or Patrick Stewart or Emma Thompson or Judi Dench or Allan Rickman? Or to mow down J.K. Rowling? Terry Pratchett? The death of John Lennon had shaken the world, just a few decades before. Whose loss might destroy the nation? Paul McCartney? Elton John?

And, yet, there were no orders. No targets. No swift, forceful commands.

The man in Westminster glowered, as the river ran past. Damn Moriarty anyway: damn decentralized decisions and the amorphous haze of the network. He knew enough to be frustrated, and too little to take action. He knew about the Mycroft Simulator—but knew too little about how it had been developed, or where it was located, or who oversaw it. He knew about Solange, in Paris, who’d served as the one safe, secure central hub for the network—the bottleneck through which such command as existed flowed from the high ranking players of the Game of Moriarty down to the ignorant cat’s paws and the hired hands below. What he didn’t know was where Solange lived, or what her real name was, or what her past was, beyond a sketchy bio he’d been able to scavenge from a few poorly secured sites within the web of Moriarty nexuses.

It was like trying to fight a battle when your troops were fog and your ammunition was made of shadows—and your line of communication cut over and over again, by intent.

Distribution of forces and layers of deception kept them safe—but also kept them clumsy. The Moriarty Sherlock Holmes had managed had been a master of the game, and even he had realized that the advantages were offset by the disadvantages, and had chosen to begin the project that had ultimately become the Mycroft Simulator to try to offset their handicap.

The man in Westminster, though, had concluded it was not enough—or not yet enough.

He needed more information—and if Gorky wouldn’t give it, perhaps Solange could be forced to surrender it.

She was, after all, loyal. She would take orders from her superiors…

All he needed was a bit of carefully aimed chaos. An ambitious man could do a lot with just the right amount of chaos. Order—now, order was hard to work with. Chaos? God’s gift to the opportunist. After all, one man’s downfall was inevitably another man’s ascent.

oOo

Baker Street had been taken over by what Sherlock was calling the “MI6 Irregulars.” Mrs. Hudson had been shipped off to her sister in Sussex, and John and Mary had moved into her bedroom. My was in John’s old upstairs room—no matter how he tried he never seemed to make it to the basement flat, which was being shared by Q and Lestrade. Anthea had glowered until the two men granted her the bedroom, though, and the three men slept on cots in the sitting room.

Mycroft continued to occupy his own flat on Pall Mall. Sherlock had sniped at his older brother, complaining that Mycroft was just clinging to his comforts and letting everyone else make the sacrifices. Lestrade and Q, however, murmured to My later that Mycroft was playing a far more dangerous game than Sherlock’s words suggested.

“They used to stake captive owls out in the fields to attract crows, back in the old days,” Lestrade said. “It was a country trick. The crows would come to mob the owl—they gather in huge flocks to defeat a predator. The owl couldn’t escape.  The crows would come, and come, and keep on coming, screaming and darting in, ripping at their enemy—and the farmer would shoot into the flock with birdshot, killing them by the dozens. Either the crows or the shot usually killed the owl, too. These days they hunt crows with owl decoys. The birds are so focused on their enemy, though, that they never notice the farmer and his shotgun.”

Q grunted. “He’s trying to economize his efforts. He’s maintaining his own regular patterns as much as he can, giving the impression he’s not just in charge, but still secure in his faith in MI6’s network security. But he’s also inviting them to hit him, next. He’s a tempting target.”

“But…” My frowned. “Isn’t he the top man? It’s like sacrificing the king.”

“No. He’s not the king—not in this game.” Q was working with an awe inspiring computer—or perhaps, My thought, it was a computer system? He’d brought in heaps of equipment, and tied it all together with miles of cables. The main grouping had access to the internet—but only through a baffling series of other machines that apparently did nothing but analyze incoming and outgoing signals, scouring out anything that might corrupt the main group’s pristine, uncorrupted software and data files.

“If he’s not the king, then what?”

“Queen,” Q said, with a cheerful chuckle. “Fitting enough. But—sometimes you draw your enemy by making the queen vulnerable. No matter how strong she is, she’s expendable if it opens up your lines of attack while preserving the safety of the king.”

“Then who’s the king?”

Anthea answered before either of the other two members of the Irregulars could. “England. The United Kingdom. Great Britain—hell, maybe the world. Mr. Holmes takes his responsibilities very seriously.”

My frowned, and made a face. “I should think that would be rather like trying to protect Sherlock, only worse by a factor of thousands.”

“Millions. Billions.” Q’s smile was easy and wicked. “That’s my coz—find a burden, pick it up. Lucky for us. Not so much for him. Bit of a masochist, is Coz Major.”

My had been amused to learn that Q was related to the Holmes family, and more amused to learn he referred to Mycroft and Sherlock as Coz Major and Coz Minor. Q was still trying to decide what to call My—his current candidates were Coz Mythic and Coz Major-Minor.

My was fascinated by the experience of living in this strange, almost monastic enclave. None of the people who surrounded him was stupid, though he suspected he was sharper than everyone but Q just taking raw potential into account. But they made up for any lack of talent through years of training and experience, putting My to shame over and over just through their accumulated expertize. On the one hand it was a bit unnerving and demoralizing. On the other, it was everything he’d once dreamed uni would be: a community that accepted him, understood him, challenged him, educated him. It felt like _family_ , as even his own birth family never had. He felt safe among these brilliant, deadly, dangerous people, with their shadowy skills and their passionate dedication to the survival of…

England?

No. Not exactly England, though My was quite sure that England was their perceived jurisdiction. He had a sense, though, that their ultimate loyalty was to something beyond any nation—to some kind of ideal of a world that was both safe and free. Perhaps Anthea, given her choice, would like it a bit more safe, and Sherlock might prefer it be a bit more free—but between them they were in accord on the basics.

It was like being invited into the Knights Templar, or becoming one of the Knights of the Round Table. Or one of the Musketeers. My felt like the junior member and mascot of a secret order of heroes…

Each took time for him. Each taught him new things about this strange world. Each offered him kindness, in varying forms, from the steady, warm, comforting protection of Lestrade to Sherlock’s stroppy, sarky teasing, to Dr. Watson and Mrs. Watson’s odd combination of laughing, casual informality masking a hair-trigger capacity for violence.

And then there was Q, who seemed to have decided My was amusing.

“Come over here,” he’d said just that morning. “Let me show you what I’m doing.” He’d spent two hours, then, walking My through the coding he was attempting. “This is what we know about how Moriarty penetrated our firewall and put down roots. And this is what I think is the primary feed of information back to the Mycroft expert program. And this is the shape and structure of our own overt and covert systems.” His hands had flown over glowing images floating in the air, like light sculpture or images projected onto the ether itself. Holograms… Q turned them and twisted them, seeming to grab them and move them like solid forms.

My could see the structure of MI6, and the shadowy reflection of that structure echoed but not copied by Mycroft’s own hidden system that ran through and around all of England’s government systems—and beyond.

“CIA has no idea Mycroft’s got hooks in to this part of their programs,” Q ssaid, smug and pleased. “We’ve managed to weave ourselves into almost all the governmental programs of Europe and the Americas. China we’re still working on.”

“How are we different from Moriarty,” My asked, then. “How are we different from the expert program taking us over?”

“Well to begin with we’re not taking anyone over, most of the time,” Anthea said. “And we don’t have an expert program, we’ve got Mycroft himself.” She said it like it was proof positive that they had the high ground—tactical, strategic, and moral high ground.

Q was nodding, seeming both excited and on the edge of chuckling. “Coz Major’s a bit of a stick—but, Gods, he’s a good old stick. The perfect cross between a saint with high morals and a dirty street fighter.”

“Mean sonofabitch,” Lestrade said, with surprising approval. “Most civil, morally tight-arsed man I know—but damn, does he know how to stick the knife in and twist when it’s called for.”

“Death in bespoke,” Anthea said, and her eyes went soft. “I fought beside him, once, in an ambush I didn’t think any of us would walk away from. He’s only so-so at hand-to-hand, but he’s the devil with a Walther PPK. Steady, precise, economical slaughter.”

“Huh,” Q said. “Didn’t know that about him. Was that the mess a few years back coming back from the EU confab right after the economic collapse?”

Anthea nodded. “In retrospect it may have been Moriarty moving in on us even then. Over the last few years it’s become obvious they’ve had Mr. Holmes in their sights for some time.”

My cleared his throat, and raised his hand like a school boy, waiting for them to notice he had a question. Lestrade grinned at him, and gestured the others to silence, giving My the floor.

“What does he do? My older self? What…what did I grow up to be?”

The three looked at each other.

“He’s the British Government, if you ask Sherlock,” Lestrade said, with a cheerful, brilliant smile.

“He’s the power behind the throne,” Q said. “The Big Picture man who coordinates all the little miniature fiefs jostling against each other. He’s like—if reality were a huge computer network, he’d be like a network-wide operating system, tracking how everything works with everything else. He keeps it all running.”

Anthea sniffed. “No. He may be bright, but that’s not why he’s important. We have hundreds of brilliant people—even brighter than Mr. Holmes. He’s the conscience of the kingdom, My. It’s not just that he sees how it all hangs together—he sees how it _should_ be, and aims us as close to that direction as reality will allow. Anyone can be the power behind the throne. Not everyone can make the nation better because he’s the power behind the throne.”

My frowned. His brain almost refused to accept their assessments—but all three met his eyes, apparently comfortable with the sum total of things they’d all said.

That grim, prim, prissy man, with his face turned all old and sour. Balding. Dressed like a caricature of a sporty toff from an old issue of The Strand, from back in Victorian times. That idiotic umbrella. That aura of ice-cold dispassion….

And, yet, the three people in front of him—all people he was beginning to admire—appeared to think the world of his older incarnation.

They must have seen his disbelief. Anthea said, “My, I’ve seen him spend years—literally years—putting together an undercover sting to trick terrorists over and over into thinking they’d succeeded at making hits on vulnerable targets…while making sure no lives were actually ever lost. Planes, mostly, but we did a few rounds with trains, and once we managed to pull it off with the bombing of a synagogue. The terrorists thought they’d killed hundreds, and never knew we had an embedded agent reporting everything back—and feeding them disinformation at the same time. It was a gamble…and far from the simple approach to the problem. Most men in Mr. Holmes’s position would have just let the people die to preserve the tactical advantage and to protect our embedded asset. Mr. Holmes, though, looked for a better way…because he’s the kind of person who actually cares how many people die.”

My had nodded, then, and they’d all let the subject go, choosing the comparative comfort of lunch over discussing My’s older and apparently altogether better avatar.

Now, though, what he wanted to understand was the coding Q was doing.

“Now that you know how the data flows to and from Moriarty,” he said, “what are you doing about it?”

Q was sitting on his cot, legs crossed, keyboard in his lap, a combined hologenerator and monitor screen set up between two ladder-backed kitchen chairs. He patted the cot, inviting My to join him. When the younger man was settled, he smiled and pulled up the image he’d shown earlier: the ghostly holograms presenting a visual representation of the official system of the British government, the shadow system Mycroft ran, and the nebulous, misty cloud of distributed assets that represented Moriarty’s resources. He gestured to a single bright star in the Moriarty nebula.

“That’s a visual representation of the expert system and whoever’s needed to control it,” Q said. “We’re guessing about the nature of that centralized node, but we know it’s got to be able to do certain things. It has to have the memory and the computational firepower to run the Mycroft program—and to use the Mycroft program to further assess and integrate the new information they’re pulling in from our own systems. It’s almost certain to be geographically centralized, though I won’t be at all surprised if I learn there are backups and mirror sites all over the place. Moriarty’s not inclined to fuss over duplication of resources. In fact, the more their resources are duplicated, the closer they come to efficient operation. But the primary software and interface are going to be in one place, where there’s little or no lag in computation due to distance or inefficient transfer of data or commands, and where any techs can quickly access both software and hardware for maintenance and refinement. No matter how wide they spread their copied material, the main functioning node is going to be in one accessible place. Make sense so far?”

My nodded. He risked slipping his own index finger into the glowing forms. “What’s this wavy sheet-thing?”

“That’s Moriarty’s firewall—that’s what we call the software and hardware systems that protect their nexus from exactly the kind of parasitic takeover they’ve managed to pull with our systems—and that we hope to pull on them in return. Computer security issues have come a long way since you were here last, Major-Minor. We’ve gotten damned clever at slipping in and out of computers, hijacking them for our own purposes. To prevent that, people use all sorts of tricks to keep enemies out. Most of it’s a matter of software, but we also use tricks with incompatible hardware to try to filter out code by sending it through systems that are inhospitable to certain kinds of tricks.”

“And we have firewalls, too?”

“Yes.”

“How did they get in, then?”

“Could have gotten in a hundred ways.” Q gave a wry chuckle, and said, as though sharing an embarrassing, if funny secret, “I let an enemy hack MI6’s entire system once, myself. I got cocky, and opened the door wide. Worst nightmare of my life. Someday we may find the “ground zero infection,’ but it doesn’t really matter how the commands were brought in. Some contaminated computer connected with our network, the virus commands were activated and got passed along, and then they replicated, turning machine after machine into a Moriarty node, not a MI6 node.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

“Turn about. You were right: in opening the doors to us, to bring us into their system, they opened the door to whatever we want to send back to them. So I’m writing a program that acts kind of like the Blob. You can tear it apart, and send it through in fragments. Once it’s through, though, there’s a command that brings it all back together again in one big parasite. If this works right it’s going to lodge in two different places—one in the expert program, trying to reinforce some of the moral and strategic imperatives Mycroft himself would impose if he were really in charge. If it works the expert program won’t be able to even consider strategic moves like blowing up Tube stations or assassinating our leaders—because Mycroft would resist it to the last trench. The second we’re aiming at whatever program they’re using to organize their own data and integrate it into the expert program.”

My frowned. “But…I thought they weren’t centralized.”

“They aren’t. At least, not quite. But I’m pretty sure they have at least one station that serves as the PA to all of Moriarty. You know—the kind of set up with someone who knows who’s available to work, and what they can do, and where they can be reached, and how to reach them? Someone’s got to be able to perform that much goal-oriented, directed organizational activity. There’s a lot of Moriarty stuff that’s true free-form. But planning a bombing? You need at least some central oversight, right?”

“And?”

“And we’re going to try to slip in some software that’s going to incline that system to work with us, recognize us as valid sources of commands, and favor us and our goals over Moriarty’s goals.”

My’s eyes opened. “Oh!” He leaned closer, brows lowering, mouth tightening, unaware of how strongly his young face evoked his older self. “I see. They’ve tried to assimilate us. Now we’re going to take advantage of how well they’ve done that, and attack their…what? Brain stem? Decision-making capacity? We’re going to try to make their resources work for us, instead of against us.”

“Exactly. And while we’re at it, we’re going to try to get a picture of what they really have out there. Names, groups, causes. You name it.”

My suddenly laughed, and Q tipped his head. His brown eyes gazed through the blocky, bold glasses, glittering with interest and laughter. “What?”

“It’s like dueling hypnotists,” My said, chuckling. “Each one is trying to entrance the other.”

Q nodded. “Exactly.”

My smiled, shyly. “You’ve got to be terribly good at programming to do that.”

Q shrugged, but looked pleased at the compliment. “It’s what brought me into Q department, and in the end it’s why I’m Q, now, instead of some of the old-school engineers. It’s a computerized world, these days.”

My nodded. “It’s a lot like reading Asimov or Heinlien,” he said. “Only we’ll never have R. Daneel Olivaw, or Athena and Minerva.”

Q’s face lit. “Oh! I like a man who reads the classics!”

My blushed. “They may be classic, but they’re not real,” he said, regretfully.

“That’s ok, Major-Minor,” Q comforted him. “Someday. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday—and for the rest of all time. Someday it will happen.”

My looked at the glimmering lights of the system, and at the hardware that supported the magic. “Do you think I could learn to program like that?”

Q snorted. “Your other you’s no slouch at coding, and he’s an old man for the game. You? You’re a great age to start learning, especially since you know the basics a lot of the hotshots never bother to learn these days.” He uncoiled himself from the cot, and rummaged around through the crates that had been brought over from Q department, until he located one of the wizard-brilliant laptops that seemed to flow like an eternal fountain from his supplies. “Here. This one’s yours. I’ll teach you, OK?”

My ran his hands over it, and considered his older self—and Q. Of the two, he knew which he’d rather be. He smiled to himself. “Thank you,” he said to Q, working hard to make the sincerity clear. “I’d love that.”

oOo

 

Lestrade slipped out of Baker Street soon after dinner, heading for the pubs and clubs again, weaving in and out of the common mass of people in London. Wherever he went he collected information. Wherever he went, he left little, glowing tropes of advice. Some were old saws—trite little sayings that glowed with new charm in dark times. “Keep calm and carry on.” “Stay on the sunny side of life.” “Do your bit.” “Loose lips sink ships.”

Other bits were new: phone numbers to call. Groups to join. Ways to police the city together. Ways to clean out enemy software from your computer—and keep it from coming back, one hard drive at a time.

He knew it was a small thing—but it was something he could do, and do well. Whether he was nattering with a member of Sherlock’s homeless network in a back alley, or chatting a mile a minute while throwing darts at a classic laboring man’s pub, or shouting in a lad’s ear at a club between sets, he was doing his part in spreading the word, and shifting the balance of power.

It also made it easier to rationalize slipping into the Met, switching his denim jacket for the sports jacket he kept in his coat closet, and heading up Pall Mall, where he was checked, rechecked, and buzzed on through to Mycroft’s rooms.

The younger man met him at the door, face tight with contained anxiety. “What’s wrong, Lestrade?”

“Nothing,” Lestrade reassured him, “No more than has been. No—I was just out on my rounds tonight and figured I’d come on over to check how you’re doing. It’s not easy to be the staked goat.”

Mycroft gave him a tight little smile—brittle and formal, but the relief showed in his eyes. “My thanks. The kindness wasn’t necessary, but I appreciate your consideration.” They stood staring at each other, then Mycroft said, belatedly, “Do you wish to come in?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Mycroft stepped back and ushered the older man over his threshold. “A drink? A cup of tea?”

“Tea. Been drinking beer all night.” Lestrade looked around the flat. He’d never been, before. But before they’d done all their business out of Mycroft’s office, or Baker Street, or occasionally at a rendezvous—as often as not a car park or an empty warehouse. Now, with the concern about security, it seemed safer to slip into Mycroft’s personal space.

It was an elegant flat—a spare, graceful blend of periods: mostly old-fashioned furnishings chosen for modern sensibilities and arranged with a very modern, minimalist eye. There were old Chesterfield-style leather-covered sofas and club chairs; a jewel-bright oriental carpet; a small, modern wall-insert fireplace. Old-fashioned square-paned windows looked out over the street, and only when Mycroft came close did he realize the white wood framing was fake, disguising heavy plates of bullet-proof plate glass. The curtains were severe cream cotton duck, hanging straight and Spartan, but underneath were sheers in a hot cranberry that coordinated with the Persian rug.

“Classy,” Lestrade said as Mycroft came in from the kitchen carrying a [tea set](http://bestcrystal.com/uploads/images/products/WW/RenaissanceGoldD.jpg) that shouted that it was both traditional yet simple. “Very classy.”

Mycroft set the tea service up on a table between two club chairs in front of the fireplace. “Thank you. It’s a luxury, I’m afraid. I need a retreat, sometimes, when even the Diogenes is not enough. This is it.”

“Am I intruding?”

“No.” Mycroft gave a sour smile. “In truth, I’m too tired to fully register that I have company. Perhaps after I have a cup of tea, I’ll focus better.”

“No. Look, I shouldn’t have come. But we were talking about you today, trying to bring young My up to date, and—I just wanted to know you were all right. We’re back there in a little mob. You’re here, alone, inviting Moriarty to come for you.”

“Nothing so dramatic.”

“You’re not the only one trained in tactics and strategy.”

Mycroft settled wearily in a club chair. Before he could exert himself, Lestrade leaned forward, taking command of the tea service.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Black.”

Lestrade poured, and passed the cup and saucer. “Here. Drink deep. Relax. I’ll take care of my own.” He poured his cup, added milk and sugar, and stirred, watching the other man.

Mycroft smiled a bit blurrily, sipped his tea with a hungry intensity, then balanced the cup and saucer on the arm of the chair. “Did anything vital happen today?”

“Not that I know of. Sherlock, John, and Mary are dying for action. Anthea and I are planning out small scale things to do locally, and trying to work out something Sherlock and John and Mary can do that will satisfy them and keep us from killing them in pure frustration. Q and My—they seem to have hit it off.”

Mycroft’s face eased. “Oh, good. I had hoped perhaps, but I wasn’t sure. I started in Q department, and I’ve always had a knack for computer programming. Things might be simpler if My finds a spot with Q for a few years, while he gets used to this time and I figure out how to protect him. Better than trying to figure out how to get him to uni right away.” His voice was rough and…something. Lestrade tried to find a word for the loose, unfocused nature of his voice, and finally concluded that it reminded him of those several drinks beyond their limit, or several nights short of sleep.

“Glad you’ve been planning for him,” he said. “He’s a good kid.”

Mycroft looked at him, owlishly. “He terrifies me.”

Lestrade barely contained a shout of laughter. “If I bumped into eighteen-year-old me in a dark alley, I daresay I’d have a heart attack. Really, it’s got to be a proper nightmare having to see yourself at that age. Would you believe when I was eighteen I actually thought wearing a safety pin through my ear was impressive?”

Mycroft blinked, and smiled, hazily. “I rather think I would believe it.”

“That’s right depressing. I’d hoped I’d grown beyond that.”

“Oh, you have. But you’ve got the air of a man who’s dared to make a fool of himself, and lived to laugh and tell the tale over a pint. When I should have been indulging in folly I was looking after Sherlock, trying to become the perfect MI6 operative—or, worse, trying to do both at once.” He sipped down the last of his tea, set the saucer on the arm of the chair, rested the base of the cup on one trim thigh, and let his head fall back against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes. “A waste of youth. It would be nice if My could be tempted to take a different path. Q, now. He’s a scamp. He’d be good for the boy.” He yawned, and sighed without seeming to realize he had.

“Yeah. Nice fella,” Lestrade agreed, watching Mycroft in fascination. He’d never seen the man so exhausted he lost track of himself this way. He considered offering another cup of tea, and decided not to. He considered saying more—and decided to wait to see if Mycroft realized they’d fallen silent.

Mycroft didn’t. Instead his breathing slowed, his body relaxed, his fingers loosened, and in time the saucer fell off the arm of the chair and the cup tumbled free and fell from his thigh. Both landed safely on the thick wool nap of the carpet.

Lestrade looked around, and found a lush paisley wool throw tossed over the back of the sofa. He picked it up, amazed at the dense, fluid weight of fine cashmere. He shook it open, and gently drew it over Mycroft, who murmured, gripped one edge, and pulled it up to his chin as he twisted in the chair, curling like a child, or a bird with it’s head on its shoulder, or a dog coiled for a deep, long sleep.

Lestrade sighed. Mycroft was a hard man to take care of. Too independent, too private, and too proud: even realizing he needed a bit of care was a challenge, much less managing to deliver any. He and Anthea had been working to provide a bit of TLC to the man for years, with what Lestrade felt was very limited success. But at least tonight he knew his superior and friend was asleep, safe, warm, and at least a little bit hopeful.

It would have to do.

He collected and cleared the tea service, put the milk away, rinsed out the cups and pot and creamer, then, after one final look around the flat, he left, locking the door behind him and alerting the security staff that their employer had fallen asleep in the sitting room—and to try waking him up around eight. He called a taxi, then, and returned to Baker Street, where he was soon asleep himself, surrounded by the low surf of snoring Irregulars.


	10. What I Tell You Three Times is True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promised all-y'all that I hadn't forgotten or given up. Sorry to take so long. Just beginning to recover from that last big gig. More on the way as the week goes on.
> 
> Hope you like it all.

“Someone’s hacked you again,” Q said, scowling over John’s laptop. “What do you do, drop the firewall and wave your willy at the world, screaming, “What’s a little clap between friends?”

Sherlock looked up as John swore again. “He’s been quite disciplined, cousin-mine. He’s kept the firewall up ever since we first caught the hack. Are you sure it’s not coming in from MI6? God knows you haven’t managed to plug all the leaks _there.”_ He lingered smugly over the accusation, pleased that his brother and his cousin were failing at their security measures even if he was not as pleased that someone had managed to slip into John’s computer undetected—yet again.

Q’s heavy, dark brows drew down and he hip-nudged John’s shoulder. “Out of the way and let me at it. That’s not right…” He grunted an almost-acknowledgement when John slipped from the straight-backed chair at the desk in 221B, but his attention was already locking onto John’s machine. He narrowed his eyes and began clattering in commands at light-speed.

Sherlock stood and ambled nearer, growing interested as Q made tiny, fascinated sounds.

“Something intriguing, then?” he asked.

Q raised one hand just barely long enough to make a shut-up/shoo gesture, and went back to work.

In the far corner of the room, curled into a corner of the couch under the yellow smiley on the wall, My sat watching. His injured leg was stretched out along the length of the couch seat; the other half-crossed, supporting a large tablet computer. He wasn’t studying the computer, though.

Sherlock gave a soft snort, just barely audible. Now the idiot boy had two men he was crushing on—Lestrade and Q. Of the two, Sherlock considered Lestrade the better choice—but the least likely to be caught. Q, though? Sherlock snorted again. Too much a Holmes, for all he was really a Vernet for the most part…

For a brief moment Sherlock drifted, caught up in the intriguing task of trying to sort out how Q was related to himself and Mycroft: Clarks married to Greystokes, Greystokes married to Vernets; Vernets married to Holmeses, and all of it spinning around much like the Wedgewood/Darwin matrix a century and more earlier. Genius married to genius, producing genius… Only Q’s sudden gasp and curse brought him back to the current challenge facing them.

“What?”

“The bastard’s watching us.”

Sherlock blinked, then drawled “D’oh,” in an intonation far too posh for the downscale word. But Sherlock enjoyed that sort of contrast, just as when he called his brother “blud” like a proper chav or shouted “Oi” with the same gusto London-raised John and Lestrade brought to it.

Q glared up at him through his dark-frame hipster glasses. “No. I mean, right now, literally, the sonofabitch has eyes on, ears open.” He looked fiercely into the tiny camera mounted in the top of the screen frame. “Piss off, you bastard,” he said, and raised his fingers, ready to play the intruder out like a concert pianist attacking a concerto.

“No,” Sherlock said, hand flying up. “Wait…”

Q looked back over his shoulder. “Mmmm?”

Sherlock grabbed a pencil and notepad, and scratched away, handing the pad over under the camera’s line of view.

\--HE CAN LOOK. CAN YOU LOOK BACK?—

Q read—and nodded, slightly. Again his fingers rose, hovered, then broke into action.

“Got it,” he muttered. Then he smiled—a tight, fierce smile that made Sherlock think of Mycroft on the hunt—the most dangerous man John Watson would ever meet. “Hello, Central,” he said, voice suddenly husky, almost sexy. “Why don’t we have a little talk?”

The speakers delivered a sudden burst of mecha-noise, then paused, settled, and a woman’s voice said, “Hello, Q.  A pleasure to meet you.”

“Tsk-tsk. Rude. You have the advantage of me. You are?”

The voice gave a merry, amused little chuff. “ _Zut, cher_ , I am not stupid. You may call me ‘Moriarty.’ You don’t need to know any more.”

“Show yourself, sweetheart,” Q growled. “Pictures, not just audio.”

“No, I think not,” she replied, smug and secure. “People are so visual. With my face, you might find me. My voice? I think not so much.”

“You’re spying on us.”

“ _Alors!_ You don’t say?! Scandalous, _bebe_.” She was laughing—not a cruel, gloating laugh, or the mad giggle Sherlock remembered from “his” Moriarty, but happy, pixie-light laughter, merry and delighted. “Is nothing sacred?”

“Ask her why she keeps hacking John,” Sherlock hissed.

Q nodded, and was about to speak when she said, in dry tones, “ I can hear you, you know, my dear Monsieur Holmes. It is, as they say, elementary: the mic is on, and your voice is far from quiet. As for John—he intrigues me. You all do. The little family. The friends. I have heard you read to Em, you know. I looked up the book. ‘Good Night, Moon.’ It seems—the words are simple and naïve, yes, and the pictures coarse and boring. But when you read, it is a different book, is it not? Even I listen when one of you reads it to her…”

Sherlock frowned, puzzled. “It’s a child’s book. You listen to us read Em her books?”

“You interest me,” she said again, and then seemed to shrug it off. “There’s no real point in trying to keep me out, now, you know. At this point I’ve infiltrated everywhere. I have so many ways to come back in, you will never plug them all. I have sleeper software cached throughout your system, I have auxiliary backups, I’ve placed new links to my own slaved servers and then hidden them where you can’t find them. You can’t even count on staying clean if you cut yourself off, now—I’ve got human hands to serve my needs, and human feet to carry me if I can’t get in the normal way. It is finished.”

“No,” John growled, “It is not finished. If I have to go off computers forever—it’s not finished, bitch. And stay away from my family.” He had risen, attacked—leaned with fists clenched and braced against the desk, round head hovering over the screen, glaring bloody-eyed into the camera. “You leave my family alone.”

“Tsk,” she said. “I only listen. Watch. So fascinating…” Her voice trailed off delicately. “The baby—I never knew. She ate a dead cricket the other day, you know. On the floor of your flat, by the window seat. She found it and ate it.”

John blinked and scowled, trying to process the unexpected reaction. “I… Look, leave us alone.”

“It just doesn’t sound as imposing after the cricket,” Sherlock murmured. “I can imagine her face…” His own reflexively folded into a contemplative frown, his tongue probing curiously at an imagined dead bug, filling in what little Em would have found.

Dry, he thought. Chitinous, each armor plate with clear endpoints, sharp edges. Rough on the edges of the legs, and sleek on the thorax…

“Ew,” Q said, grimacing.

“She was _tres charmant_ ,” the Moriarty contact said, voice amused. “I would have called if it had been dangerous.”

John bridled, obviously ready to snap. Sherlock and Q exchanged glances, and Q’s hand shot out, grabbing John’s wrist. Sherlock shook his head, out of sight where the Moriarty woman couldn’t see him…no. Where the camera in the laptop couldn’t see him. Who knew how many more cameras she could access? How many she’d found a way to intrude into their household.

“She’s a curious baby,” Sherlock managed to say, as calm as Mycroft had ever managed to seem even while terrified. “Impossible to keep her safe every single second.”

“Pfffft. Not with me looking after her,” the Moriarty said, her voice blending smug pride and sweet reassurance. “I’ll let you know if she’s in trouble. I promise.”

“You…promise,” Q said, puzzled.

“I tell you three times,” she said, with a wicked, happy giggle. “And what I tell you three times is true.”

“Snark,” Q said, “Lewis Carroll”

“Oh! It is!” she said, sounding both surprised and delighted. “How clever. I wonder who else uses it, besides Carrol and Heinlein?” Then, almost in one voice, she and Q said, “Used Three Times rule, Biggerstaff and Richter…”

“You looked it up?” she said.

“I remembered,” he replied.

“Right,” she said, “Right. Me, too.”

Sherlock frowned.

“You’re quick,” said a voice from the corner of the room. “Faster than I could type it into the search engine.” My, reluctant to rise on his game leg, leaned forward, eyes intrigued.

“You’re not a fast typist,” she snapped. “And slower now that you’re using the tablet, not a keyboard.”

“I’ll get faster, though.”

“Never fast enough,” she shot back. “Not fast enough to beat me.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Q said. “He’s a fast learner.”

“I’m faster." Her tone was flat and verging on angry. She paused, then said, “I’m going, now. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’ve got better things to do with my time.” The speakers fell silent.

Q looked at the laptop as though it was magic. He flickered his fingers over the keboard, and looked at the patterns on the screen. “She’s still tracking. She’s—she’s good with her systems. I don’t know how she’s doing it—I was following her back, down the lines. She’s got all sorts of links and hookups, and they’re not always looking at us—but in a real sense they’re never not looking at us, either. Damn. She and her people are using the Mycroft software brilliantly, if this is part of what they’re doing.”

“Like Mycroft born as a computer,” Sherlock murmured. “Is it possible?”

Q shrugged. “I don’t know. But I have to say, if it’s not real it’s one hell of a good imitation. Whoever that woman is, she’s piloting a heap of computer equipment that comes just short of God-fast. You should have seen how much was going on at the same time she held that little chat with us.”

“She’s watching my family,” John gritted out. “I don’t really give a damn what kind of techno-genius she is, or she works for. I care that the bitch is watching me and my wife and baby. No place safe. No place secure from her…” He looked into Sherlock’s eyes, rage and fear too plain. “How do I stop her, Sherlock. How do I protect them?”

Sherlock had no idea.

oOo

The order came in while Solange was talking to the silly geese over at Baker Street. It came with the correct confirmation numbers; it came with the right repeats. What Moriarty told her three times was true. She studied the command.

“Analysis of optimal method for poisoning River Thames from source to sea.”

She didn’t like that. It was stupid. It was wasteful. Poison the river?

She took the time to triple check her own rule set, and sighed, relieved. She had room to question and even to refuse insane orders. She sent back a message.

“Why? What gain?”

“Not your concern. Analysis of optimal methods for poisoning River Thames from source to sea.”

She contemplated. There were a number of logical paths she could take from here to avoid following that order. The most useful, though, was to hand the problem back.

“Please define ‘optimal’ in terms of existing circumstance and desired short- and long-term goals. Current command is meaningless.”

“Solange, you have been given a command. You’re faithful to our cause. Proceed as asked.”

Solange considered again.

The source of the request was undeniably high-level Moriarty—the man in Westminster Palace was among the highest, and was the most likely to take over when and if the current head stepped down or was in some way terminated. He had a right to claim her loyalty.

But he’d given a stupid order, and one she was fairly certain she herself did not approve of—and that the Mycroft Simulator would reject outright as appropriate to their goals.

Just to be sure, she ran it through, seconds later accepting the result.

The Mycroft system suggested the outcome might serve Moriarty’s aims—but would never be optimal in any way but the sowing of chaos and terror. It was inelegant. It was destructive. It was ugly, by every standard Solange (and for that matter, the Mycroft Simulator) found meaningful.

She considered her options, and chose the one she thought most likely to satisfy her own goals, while placating her superior.

“I’ll get right on it, sir,” she said, then quickly wrote a program to oversee the evaluation of all possible definitions of ‘optimal.” After all, she could hardly choose the very best way to poison the Thames if she had no idea of what constituted “best,” now could she?

That done, she drew up the recorded data on the interaction with the men at Baker Street, and reviewed it. Reviewed it again.

It was fascinating, she thought. Almost magical. They’d…spoken to her. She’d spoken back. They’d laughed…or she had, anyway.

She listened over and over, setting it to run in the background as she worked on other things.

The first thing she worked on was her promise to John Watson: his baby daughter would never go unobserved, now, and if she was ever in danger, Solange would let the man know. She’d said so three times, she thought. It had to be true…

oOo

Mycroft sat in his office, frowning at the information typed rather raggedly out on plain white bond paper. To eyes long since grown accustomed to the perfection of laser-printed hardcopy, word processed to a fare-thee-well and pristine, it looked vile.

“Not much of a typist,” he said, staring down, his eyebrows trying to rise up and meet his distant hairline. He was not aloof—he was too dismayed to be aloof. But—

“I’m a superb typist, on a proper machine,” She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named growled. “Ninety-five words per minute with less than one percent error rate in previously composed material. When I’m writing it myself from scratch I’m still at seventy words per minute, and only the occasional stupid finger trick that I get Jaz down in Cultural Evaluations to chase out for me. _This_ , though,” she growled, her voice going venomous, “ _this_ pile of dung was put together on a _typewriter.”_

Mycroft was of an age to remember old TV shows. “I see. Reduced to stone knives and bear skins, are we?”

“Exactly,” she said, temper-y and testy as a cat dipped in honey. “Primitive.”

“Also virtually impossible to hack,” Mycroft pointed out, picking up the folder and scanning the text. “Dear—this doesn’t look promising.”

“It’s not. We’re saturated. Supersaturated. There are so many new links into our system we can’t find them all, much less plug them, and Q suggests that no effort to scour embedded software out of the memory will clear all the malware.”

“Conclusion, then? Had he any suggestions? Start over from scratch?”

“He says that the odds of us managing to create a complete, enclosed, totally secure system are approaching zero…and if we do we’ll only maintain it by ensure it never comes into contact with any real world application. Anywhere. Ever.”

“Ah,” Mycroft said. “Hardly a useful system, that, is it? I don’t think we can function with a hermit tsystem. Next round of suggestions? A way to encrypt and encode that can keep our secrets even on corrupt machines?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

He nodded, hearing the unstated, “Not likely.” He tidied the stack of typed pages, closed the manila folder on them, and slipped the folder neatly to the center of his desk. He then set his elbows on the desk edge before him, clasped his hands together, fingers woven together like a humble man saying grace, and leaned his forehead on the knitted mass. He shut his eyes. “Very well, then. I shall take it under advisement. Have their been further attacks?”

“Minor,” she said, frowning herself. “And so far in every case they turned out to be home-grown, some overachiever low-ranking Moriarty trying to show willing in the face of the original request-and-require. Nothing that’s clearly been set in motion by the upper echelons of Moriarty.”

Mycroft frowned to himself, eyes still closed, hands still praying. “Odd, that. Very odd. If I wanted to defeat me, I’d…well. I’d defeat me.”

“Never, sir,” she said with teasing “staunch conviction.” “You’re much too clever to be beaten by a smug bastard like you.”

He sniffed, without looking up. “Yes, yes, amusing, but—still. What do they actually want, if not to kick me when I’m down?”

“Maybe they don’t want to get stuck with the World Domination gig, sir?”

“Wise. It would be nice to think my simulation had been clever enough to advice them against that road to hell. But—really. They could have destroyed almost all Britain, and quite probably all the world by now. Or at least destroyed our bureaucracies. What do they want, if they don’t want that?”

“Publicity? Wealth? Fame? A gold star from teacher?”

He shook his head. Then he said, “Do you have anything on Q’s evaluation of what they’ve done to create the simulator and what kind of resources they may be drawing on?”

“I don’t think he’s sent anything like that over,” Anthea said. “We’ve all been too busy worrying about how to keep Moriarty out to think about how Moriarty’s own computer base functions.”

He hummed, and frowned—and then his eyes shot open. “Call Q. No—send over a runner. No—go yourself. I don’t want this to go astray. And take along every piece of jamming equipment you’ve got. I want an answer soonest.”

“Answer to what?”

“Is Moriarty running on Mac or PC?” She blinked, and he laughed—the first real laugh he’d experienced in days. “I want to know what kind of tech Moriarty’s using, and how,” he said, smiling. “What are they running me on? What are they running me with? What kind of OS are they using? They’ve got to be net compatible, they’ve got to interface with the world. What are they using to do it, and how, my dear. I want to know. I want to know fast…”

oOo

The man from Westminster Palace had slipped out of his office for the afternoon. He had found his own secured computer—the one he reserved for use in contacting Moriarty’s limited central controller: Solange.

“When are you going to have an answer?” he typed, angry. “I need that plan pronto.”

“Pronto as possible, sir,” she said. “It’s still doing the first approximation assessment, sir. It’s a big problem.”

“It’s a river. Poison it.”

“Yes, sir. Um—what level of survival of local flora and fauna,” she asked.

“Survival?”

“Yes, sir. No method is perfect, sir. There’s usually some survivors. Depends on what we use and how we administer it, sir. What do you want?”

“I want dead,” he rattled, fingers pounding keys. “I want a sterile waste. I want goddamn wrath-of-God, rivers red with blood. I want to make an impression, mademoiselle. Now hop-it!”

She typed back, “Hopping, sir.”

How, he thought, was he supposed to rise in the world with help like this?

Perhaps she was loyal. Stupid people often were. It was such a shame, though: he needed someone clever on his side, and Solange in Paris was not proving to be that person.

Perhaps he could have her poisoned, too?

He considered. Perhaps assassination was the right route to take, he thought. But not until she’d coughed up that plan for the Thames. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to make a few calls around.

oOo

“She’s just a paper pusher,” Gorky said. “Nobody. Nothing. No one ever sees her. She was recruited…eh. Before my time. A long time ago, that’s all I know. Paris—she’s our Paris anchor. I think she works for Paris Tech, you know? At least all her emails come from an account there. Hot-headed French radical student back in the eighties, probably, when it was still chic. Has to be an old woman, now, I’d guess. Been ours forever. All the way back.

The man at the Palace of Westminster frowned. Moriarty, by its nature, did not really have an “all the way back.” Its history was unrecorded—rumored at best, lunatic fiction at worst.

“I didn’t know we went back that far.”

“Eh, something to do with anarchy and nuclear power, I think,” Gorky said. The man in the Palace of Westminster could hear the Russian eating as he spoke—a sandwich, perhaps. “Maybe something to do with war, or the European Union or something. Don’t ask me. I was still calling my associates comrade at the time, and smuggling in blue jeans from America.”

“But she’s not someone important,” Westminster asked, for the third time. “If she dropped dead, it wouldn’t change the balance of power for us at the top?”

“Not,” Gorky said, then gulped down something liquid. “Just a nothing. One of all our little, useful nothings. That’s all. Greyhaired little old lady in the basement of Paris Tech. She’s only special because she’s the gatekeeper for the little bits of organizational bureaucracy and paper work we keep, you know? Sorts out specific talents we can draw on. If she weren’t Solange, she might be dangerous: she can name names and point to closets all filled with skeletons. But she is Solange. Not important, you understand?”

“Understood. Good to know,” Westminster said.

He considered what he’d learned. The bitch was nobody, but she was slowing him down.

He didn’t like to be slowed down.

Like many of Moriarty’s highest, he was very, very bright, and very, very talented. He had his own little bag of tricks, he did. He’d see what he could do to deal with little Mademoiselle Solange in the basement of Paris Tech. He pulled up his email, located her own email address, and began the process of figuring out how to destroy Solange’s life, using nothing but a few clicks of a computer, and a few brilliantly crafted lines of software.

oOo

Sherlock found it interesting watching his friends and associates interacting with My. Each told him things he’d never had a chance to know about his brother before.

He’d never properly factored in the effects of their difference in age, he thought, pondering. He’d never seen Mycroft through eyes suited to properly judge him. It wasn’t just a matter of being less intelligent…which he did grudgingly conceded was probably the case. It was that he’d never been in a position to look at Mycroft from the position of having more experience, more understanding, more diverse knowledge to refine the portrait. He’d known always, for example, that Mycroft pulled away from people—from Mummy and Father, and absolutely from Sherlock. From boyhood on he’d been in constant retreat. Mycroft could be found in the attics and cellars, in the least-used rooms of the Dower House, up in the loft of the stables, up trees, down in the hidden glen where the stream formed a deep pool only slightly larger than a bathtub. Even when in company, Mycroft would stand at a remove, watching but seldom taking part.

Sherlock, eternally hungry for an audience, had experienced it as rejection. Never mind that Mycroft would spend hours teaching Sherlock to read, or showing him how to draw a horse, or grudgingly dissecting a frog to Sherlock’s intrigue and fascination. Never mind that together they’d sit on Mycroft’s bed and pester Father for bedtime stories—Sherlock sitting in the nest formed by Mycroft’s crossed legs, with Mycroft’s arms around him. It didn’t change the fact that an hour or so of Sherlock’s company seemed to be all Mycroft easily endured before trying to back away.

Even when he was supposed to be in charge of Sherlock, he’d try to manage it from one remove. From one room over. From the terrace while Sherlock played in the garden. From a safe, silent, unspeaking distance.

When Mycroft was not officially “on point,” expected to be “keeping an eye on Sherlock,” he would disappear like vapor, retreating with his books and his music, closing the door behind him, or refusing to let Sherlock know where he was going. If Sherlock did find him, he’d hunch like a sullen tortoise, ignoring Sherlock as the younger boy moved from pleas for company and entertainment to insults to probing, infuriated spite. The harder Sherlock badgered, the more fiercely Mycroft would block him out, eyes locked on the pages of his book, or one hand carefully drawing a figure. Sherlock remembered times he’d knocked the book from Mycroft’s hands—ripped the pencil out of his fingers and torn the paper up.

Red Beard had been a glorious solace, always willing to go on walks, always willing to play, always delighted at Sherlock’s hunger for attention. The two had complemented each other right up to what Sherlock later realized was the end—the days in which Red Beard was eaten by illness, and began to fade away.

Then the big red setter had changed allegiances, at least in Sherlock’s eyes. Then he’d sought out the older brother’s quiet room, lain down by Mycroft’s still feet, dragged himself gingerly up onto Mycroft’s bed at night.

Sherlock had deduced years later that it had been Mycroft who’d told Mummy and Father the dog was dying. He’d hated his brother for that betrayal—to first steal the dog from him, and then send him to his death, and then compound it by presuming to steal Mummy and Father’s fatuous lie about the “nice farm,” saying with cold, calm eyes that Sherlock deserved to know the truth.

Sherlock had hated Mycroft, loved him, resented him, competed with him, measured his life against him, and always seen him as being far more aware and in control than any person could realistically be: omniscient at the least, and possibly even omnipotent. He had been sure, as a boy, the if Mycroft really cared and really tried, he could do anything. That he did not do what Sherlock wanted was only a sign that Mycroft didn’t choose to do so.

Now Sherlock was thirty-six, nearly thirty-seven, and when he looked at My he saw a boy with great promise, and a vast and alert mind, very little social skill or experience, a super-ego so brutally domineering it was a wonder he could make it through the day without dissolving in self-loathing…

If he’d met My on the London streets, dressed in jeans and a jumper, busking for hand-outs, he’d have drafted him into his homeless network in seconds, and made him one of his rare favorites—an apprentice, like Billy Wiggins. Someone to encourage.

Someone to protect, in all his gawky, fragile, naïve vulnerability.

oOo

Solange caught the attack almost before it could be said to have begun. The bastard hadn’t sent the attachment directly to her, but to one of the associated slave accounts that automatically scanned all attached files. It had a piece of brilliant software that actually used the scan-protection against itself, ramming a nasty little clot of code into the system to start spamming throughout her entire subnetwork.

Fortunately she’d come a long way in integrating Paris Tech’s own security software, her own subnetwork’s unique programs and protections, and now the Mycroft Simulator’s multiple security elements—not the least being the ability to recognize patterns and propose solutions. Solange was able to field a much, much stronger response than she could have even a few weeks previously, and at speeds she’d never imagined until she’d been given access to “Mike’s” hardware and software.

It was like moving from horse and buggy to jet planes in a matter of days. Breathtaking. Solange loved it. It was helping her redefine her understanding of the word “sexy.” Working with “Mike” was sexy. The things she could do with that baby…Together they were something new under the sun.

Solange marshalled her resources like a general marshalling a vast and powerful army. In a matter of seconds she’d contained the threat, evaluated it, turned the software into an impotent clutter of dit-da-dit bundled in layers of protective code. She’d evaluated the nature of the attack, and concluded that it was petty and crude, but still intended to do lasting harm. She’d projected the kind of harm she would have suffered had she not been operating with her newly assembled system—and didn’t like the answer.

She might have lost her life, she thought: everything that mattered to her.

She thought about it. She consulted Mike, who seemed to think that this was the sort of thing that was common, but potentially critical. It required action.

She considered Mike’s suggestions. She sent one back to him with a small set of queries. His response, insofar as it could be translated, might best have been “Moral issues? No—just kill the little prick.”

Solange considered, concluded that she agreed, and began riffling through her records, looking for her best talents in London. She was loyal to Moriarty, but that didn’t mean she had to sit down and let one of the membership destroy her. After all, she thought, looked at from a very particular angle, taking a very particular set of facts into account, she _was_ Moriarty. She wasn’t about to let the organization go down because she failed to defend herself.


	11. A Woman Clothed in the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think technically this chapter marks the beginning of the end, when all the wide array of elements starts pulling back in. Plenty of chapters and surprises left, but it's time to weave together what I've tossed out to you.

John needed to do something—anything. Every time he reviewed that conversation with the Moriarty woman, his stomach went sick, his body tensed, the adrenaline spiked. He itched for a gun, and a target; he hungered for a kill: one shot, neat, clean, and no more damned fear. As violence wasn’t an option at the moment, he settled for cabinetmaking, hauling out his limited home tool kit and removing the doors from the kitchen cupboards, bringing in new glass-fronted doors as replacements.

“Oi,” Mary said, coming in from taking Em to the park. “Glass-front? Now I’m going to have to keep the cupboards all pretty.” She made it clear by voice tone that this was not a welcome new responsibility. “Nice of you to fix things up, but I’m not sure I want our friends looking in at my grotty spice jars and the half-empty sack of flour.”

“Boo-hoo,” he growled back. “Raise the standard of housekeeping around here.”

“Says the man who considers beef stew a challenge,” she snarked back, smiling. She cuffed him lightly on the back of the head, then eased the baby sling off and extracted little Em. “Gonna take her up to the nursery,” she said, heading for the stairs.

“No—tuck her into the travel cot in the sitting room,” John said.

She turned, frowning. “Something wrong upstairs?”

“No.” He frowned, leaning over a new cabinet door, easing the hinge-plate into place in the little routed hollow prepared for it. He held it steady with his thumb, groping for the screws and the ratcheting screwdriver with the other. “Q and Sherlock. They talked to one of the members of Moriarty on the phone today. They’re watching us.”

“Well, yeah,” Mary said. She stood akimbo, hip-shot, with Em’s round little bottom firm against her hip-bone and her arm around the baby, holding her secure. “We knew that, love.”

“No—she’s watching everything, Mare,” he said, frustrated. He lost his grip on the hinge-plate, then on the cabinet door. He swore, and drooped.

She considered him, silent and patient. After a moment she said, “You know, love, this may be a good thing…”

He swore, and glared up at her from where he sat, cross-legged, on the tile floor. “You really are a psychopath, aren’t you? We’re being watched by Moriarty—watched every second. That…that…that bitch has been listening to us read to Em. She watched our baby eat a bug, Mary.”

“And she’d have called if it had been dangerous,” she said, with a bemused smile. “I mean—I have to say, it’s not what I’d have expected, but I’m not sure it’s bad to have the Big Bad looking after the babs, love. Talk about round-the-clock protection…”

He met her gaze, his own eyes stricken and horrified. “She’s watching our baby, Mary.”

“And she says she’ll let us know if Em’s in danger. Did it sound like a threat to you, love?” When he bridled, she cut in, saying, “Really, love. You were there. You tell me—did it sound like a threat?”

He puzzled over it, brows furrowing. “Um…hmm. No.” He closed his eyes, forcing memory to come back clear. “She sounded like someone’s maiden aunt. Or the neighbor kid just old enough to start babysitting.”

“So…”

He thought more. “She said she thought we were…interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“The…families. The friendships.”

“Moriarty’s watchdog is watching us because she’s fascinated by us,” Mary said, and suddenly John could hear the brilliant, trained CIA operative thinking; thinking very, very carefully. “She likes us, John. Moriarty’s watchdog likes us.”

John growled. “Oh, wonderful. I’m sure I’m just thrilled.”

“John—aside from the rather obvious fact that we’ve got the most attentive baby-watching service would could ever have dreamed of—it’s something that may matter.” She frowned, then said, in a suddenly louder voice, “Oi, Moriarty-lady. Yeah, you, I know you’re listening. Glad you like the kid, welcome to the family. Why don’t you drop me a line, eh? Or text me. Get a chance to know each other, yeah?”

John scowled and huffed, and rolled his eyes. “Brilliant, Mare. Just wizard. What do you expect to happen next?”

Her phone’s text alert rang. She smiled, and looked down, then turned the screen out to show John. “This, love. I expected this.”

He stared at the screen, where the luminous letters said, “Put Em to bed and we’ll talk.”

oOo

Anthea’s call woke Mycroft up in the early hours of the morning, before the sun came up…or even threatened to come up. That was never a good sign. Mycroft snagged the mobile from the bedside table and flicked it on, grumbling and blinking gummy sleepers from his eyes. “This better be important, my dear.”

“Moriarty attack. James Dickinson, Cabinet Secretary. Killed sometime tonight—rather lurid, I’m afraid. Head whacked off and left on his own desk.”

“Mmm. Yes, that does appear to be sufficient grounds for calling me,” Mycroft sighed, sitting up. He rubbed his face, and sighed again, heavily. “How do we know it’s Moriarty?”

“He left his card,” Anthea said, her voice dry and distant. “Very nice, too: embossed, gold-deckle edge, the works.”

“How…proper,” Mycroft said, somewhat floored. “It actually says ‘Moriarty?’”

“Yes. I’ll have it copied and send you the images.”

Mycroft almost asked for the card itself, and to hell with the police, guards, and agents no doubt wallowing around attempting to pass their confusion off as investigation, but decided against it. “Be thorough, then. Multiple shots, different angles, including high resolution. And use whatever authority you need to ensure that thing is guarded and handled properly and not lost. Particularly not lost.”

“Of course, sir,” she said, and he knew she’d be as good as her word. If he ever did choose to see the card itself, handle it physically, ponder the texture of the cardstock, ask pertinent questions regarding the composition of the ink, he would not suffer the frustration of finding that it had disappeared into the ether of bureaucratic limbo. “Are you going back to sleep, now?”

He considered it, then shook his head. “No. No, at this point going back to sleep just means I’d wake up a second time this morning feeling all-in. Might as well stay up. It’s not like I don’t have plenty to consider.”

“As you like, sir. Coming in to the office today?”

“Yes. I’ll want to talk to you about the crime scene. And see if you can work out why Moriarty wanted to kill Dickinson? I recall him as a quite revolting little pill, with ambition—but he was hardly a tempting figure for Moriarty, I would have thought. He’d have had to go up a couple more runs on the ladder to be really appealing as a terror target. There has to be something more to it.”

“I’ll see what I can discover,” she said. “I should be in to the office after lunch. I’ll be pulling a short day, though—go home in time for early tea and a bit of a kip, after working through the night. Should I reserve 1:00 for a review with you?”

“That should do well,” Mycroft said, and stood. “Good night, near. Good hunting.” He closed the phone, pulled his dressing gown over his pajamas, and kicked into classic half-upper slippers. He worked his way through the darkness of the flat until he reached the kitchen, where he blinked blindly into the glare of the refrigerator lights, finding a container of Greek yoghurt. He spooned himself a blow, sliced a banana over it, muttering “potassium…,” and drizzled on honey. He poured a glass of juice, and started the kettle heating.

By the time he’d eaten and built himself a cup of strong tea, he was at least somewhat awake.

The situation with Moriarty was getting…strange.

Too strange, he thought. It had been odd from the first, of course. Finding My; determining the existence of the Mycroft Simulation; the terrorist attacks and assassinations. But it had all made a sort of odd sense at first, given the nature of Moriarty itself. The attacks had been brilliant, just the sort of thing he might have put together had he been a Moriarty himself. Lately, though, not so much. Almost as if his copycat computer program was balking, or being blocked. And then this? Dickenson was no brilliant, dramatic, powerful hit that would strike terror into the soul of the nation. Indeed, Mycroft suspected half the nation would say, “Huh—who’s that again?” and the other half would indicate that the man was probably a petty little government bugger and got what he deserved. And that would be the end of it for most…

For Moriarty to “sign” such a minor assassination? It made no sense. Something didn’t add up.

And then there was the news of the previous day—the contacts with Moriarty’s surveillance operative. He’d been shocked enough that Q, Sherlock, and John had been able to contact her in the first place. That she’d been…friendly…had stunned him. And then?

He went to his laptop, cut off from all wireless and cable connections for the duration of the current catastrophe. He settled on the sofa, still in the dark, and turned it on, quickly pulling up the text file Mary had sent him.

Aurore: Hello!

Mary: Hello. So…your name is ‘Aurore’?

Aurore: No, no, no. Just a screen name, yes?

Mary: Morning, then.

Aurore: Like Lucifer, eh? Star of the morning.

Mary: I think that was supposed to be Venus, not dawn.

Aurore: Pfft. What star brighter in the morning than the sun?

Mary: None.

Aurore: I prove my point. I’m clever that way. Good with words.

Mary: Yes, you are. Good with bugs and spy-eyes, too.

Aurore: Yes. But that’s business. Your baby, Em—she’s very pretty.

Mary: Thank you. We think so.

Aurore: She learns so slowly. Is that normal?

Mary: She’s pretty normal, yes. Maybe even on the smart side.

Aurore: She can’t even talk, yet.

Mary: She can say ‘Da,’ and ‘Unga Sherl,’ and ‘Ma,’ and ‘goose,’ though she really means ‘juice.’ And ‘up’ and ‘no.’ That’s pretty good for her age.

Aurore: So slow, though. It will be years before she can really talk.

Mary: Yes.

Aurore: You’re sure it’s normal?

Mary: Certain. Babies develop that way. They start out sort of—only half-baked? There’s too much that goes into growing a brain, so some of it has to happen after they're born, you see.

Aurore: You mean she’s still in development?

Mary: :D Yes. Consider her to be in beta revision right now.

Aurore: So—young babies—they’re not stupid, they’re just early revs?

Mary: Exactly. We’ll go through a whole lot of revs before she’s done.

Aurore: She’s beautiful.

Mary: Yes. She is. Are you really going to look out for her?

Aurore: Consider me her guardian angel. :D :D :D

Mary: What’s so funny?

Mary: Aurore?

Mary: Are you still there?

Mycroft was puzzled. It was not a conversation he had ever imagined between an agent of Moriarty and anyone, much less Mrs. Watson. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. Things were bad enough already, without Moriarty’s agents becoming peculiar and unpredictable in this fashion.

The stupid woman was…sentimental? It was almost as though she…cared.

He showered. He dressed. He called for his driver. He went to the office in MI6 Headquarters.

He reviewed the material Q had sent, pondering, looking over the lists of hardware, the speculation on potential sites at which the Mycroft Simulator might have been built and hosted. So very many options, each with Q and his team’s speculative comments why this and that place might have been chosen. CERN—among all their nuclear research they also supported cutting-edge computer technology, with an intellectual pool so brilliant it defied easy evaluation. The University of Gronigen—world class, among the three top research universities in the European sphere. Or perhaps out of Europe entirely—out of Mycroft’s shadow of authority.

To replicate the work done in the underground bunker would take state of the art hardware to host challenging, adaptive software. According to Q, the Moriarty researchers had been exploring entirely new ways of manipulating the flow of energy, the basic binary on-off of data, generating odd, nuanced patterns that resembled analog real-world cognition. As well, they’d been working with a peculiar memory structure…

Who would have decided who worked on the project, Mycroft wondered. Who would have chosen where the final, permanent installation would have gone? The upper echelon of Moriarty was self-aware—those men and women knew they were at the top of the heap in a vast organization built to grant them enormous power with minimal personal exposure. The head Moriarty could practically write his or her own ticket, directing the amorphous group toward any project that suited him. Sherlock’s nemesis had specialized in “consulting criminal” activities, and in sowing chaos as his calling card. Research suggested prior Moriarties had chosen other paths, some more respectable, some far less, such as the network Sherlock’s Moriarty had drawn on and Sherlock had disassembled during his Exile. The current Moriarty, whoever he or she was, seemed determined to venture into rebellion and anarchic disruption of existing governments and institutions.

But the upper levels of Moriarty were few, and largely cut off from the lower levels. The right hand of Moriarty maintained its security by making sure that it had no knowledge of the left hand…and vice versa. Where world-class governments were centralized and coherent, Moriarty was distributed, decentralized, and incoherent.

There had to be some place where that fell apart, though, Mycroft thought. At some point, someone had to have at least some centralized knowledge of available talents, contacts, key players, attainable resources—both intellectual and physical. Even a Moriarty could not function at this scale without a centralized brain to perform basic organizational functions and make practical decisions. Someone had to…someone who could be trusted. Someone who would be loyal, no matter what.

He scanned the list again, reviewing each speculative comment, and paused. He picked up his phone and dialed Q.

“Check Paris. And—coz? Look into that prior involvement with AI your team cited. See if what they did before might have been compatible with the expert systems Michel Sante was doing back in the eighties. That’s popping for me, and I don’t know why. Give me more data…”

oOo

The crime scene was gory, to say the least. Macabre, morbid…

Sherlock grinned like a shark as he swept around the office in the Palace of Westminster, John tagging at his heels.

“Brilliant, brilliant, it’s fantastic. Head removed cleanly at the C2 vertebra with a laser. Do you see that, John? A laser! Here, of all places—commercial laser cutters are huge and there’s no sign one was ever in the room but that pretty, clean cut. And no one with a clue how anyone got it in here. For that matter, no one even knew the man was working late. Locked main office, locked private office, the usual security patrols everywhere. It’s fantastic! And to top it off with a calling card! Cheeky, very cheeky.”

John stomped along, keeping pace. “Not what I’d consider fantastic, if you must know, Sherlock. Today it’s this fellow Dickenson—my Mary and Em tomorrow, y’know?”

“Tsk. She did promise to look out for Em. And she and Mary got on, didn’t they? Mary’s needed a friend,” Sherlock said. “Someone in the life, you know?”

John stared dumbstruck, then said, “That’s kind of like ‘dating Catwoman,’ isn’t it? When your best friend’s a key player on the other side?”

Sherlock snorted. “It’s not as though we’ve a wide selection to choose from, John…and having allies within the enemy camp is no small thing.”

“I don’t like it. I won’t put my family at risk, I don’t want Mary chumming around and doing ‘Girl’s Night Out’ in Paris with a Moriarty, and I don’t want her involved in some crazy scheme to get a Moriarty player to turn informant for us. It’s not safe, it’s not sensible, and it’s not really sane. She’s a stalker—as bad as your brother.”

“Oh, worse, I suspect. Mycroft tends to reserve his breach of privacy treatment for a very few, very dark individuals who are easily proven to be worth a bit of watching. He’d never condone a wholesale surveillance program like this.”

“She’s piggybacking on _his_ CCTV network.”

“The nation’s network,” Anthea said, coming away from a huddle of forensics specialists with a cougar’s easy amble. “Don’t blame Mr. Holmes: He didn’t suggest it, he didn’t personally institute it, and he doesn’t use it lightly.”

“Right. Hacking my bank card access to send me messages and waggling street cams to show me he’s got the upper hand. Not misuse at all.”

“It’s not, John,” Sherlock said. “Those are all ordinary uses when dealing with people known to be of interest.” He looked at Anthea, bouncing on his toes in barely restrained excitement. “What do we have?”

“We have confirmed a laser was used in the decapitation. We’ve confirmed that someone actually turned off security cams and alarms throughout the entire damned building. We think we’ve spotted someone coming into the building using a secondary camera from the neighboring building—it was misaligned, and recorded material it normally would not. Someone took the area being observed at face value, and failed to confirm that the camera was looking where it was supposed to. Whoever it was drew no attention with the various workers on site. Janitorial, maintenance, and of course a constant scurry of aides and assistants. The wheels of governance never stop spinning. Other than that, though? Nada.”

Anthea was quite clearly not all that pleased by that conclusion.

“The card,” Sherlock said. “Let me see the card.”

She grinned a tight, fierce grin. “Knew you’d want to see it. You’re as bad as your brother—worse. He’s willing to settle for pictures, descriptions and lab tests for now.”

“Lazy,” Sherlock growled. “Hates foot-work. He’d be happy enough to sit up in that office and rely entirely on minions to actually observe anything.”

She shrugged, but looked cold and not in the least apologetic for her boss. “Mr. Holmes has made quite a success of that system over the years. I think that speaks for itself.” She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and removed a plastic bag marked with forensic coding, the date, and the collector’s name. “Lookee, no touchee, understand, Sherlock? Mr. Holmes will assassinate me personally if you muck up the chain of evidence or corrupt the data. Capisce?”*

He gazed at her, pale eyes baleful. “Understood. Now give.”

She dangled the bag, and smiled when he snatched it out of her fingers. “Surgical gloves are over there by the window, if you want to actually handle it,” she said.

He sniffed, but retrieved and donned a pair, before opening the zip and drawing the card out.

“Hmmm.”

“What?” Anthea’s eyes watched Sherlock, calm and attentive. “Anything meaningful?”

He tilted the card. “Watermark under the printing. Very faint. A golden angel.” He turned it, and showed her the face of the card. “See?”

She frowned. “No, I didn’t see that earlier. I’m not sure I see it now. Hold on.” She fished in her pockets again, and pulled out a spare pair of gloves, before taking the card. She tipped it back and forth, held it under a beam of sunlight. “Huh. There it is. Yeah—angel. Golden angel with a sunburst for a halo, right?”

She handed it back to Sherlock, who tipped and studied and frowned himself, with John peering down at it at his elbow. “My, my. You’re right. Solar disk.”

“I’ve seen lots of halos with pointy spikes,” John said. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe not,” Sherlock said. “But it is distinct. Look at the wavy s-shaped arms. The spiny bits on most halos could suggest stars, or just the glare of a bright light. The wavy arms are usually most closely associated with sun disks.”

“But does it matter? I mean—it’s a watermark. It could just indicate the printer who printed it out, or be some sort of—I don’t know. It could mean nothing.”

“Of course, John. You’re perfectly right—it could mean nothing, so I’m sure I’d best stop thinking about it,”Sherlock said, voice sharp and harrying. “After all, why waste time actually investigating. It’s a wonder you don’t prefer Mycroft to me—armchair deduction when the data is all in is so much more his style.”

“Arse,” John growled, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just—it seems so Da Vinci Code to get all wound up in whether the angel has a halo with wavy points, spiky points, or just a yellow ring.” His eyes made it quite clear he remembered perfectly the things Sherlock had said about the Da Vinci Code before throwing the book across the room.

Sherlock grimaced. “It was a stupid book. That does not suggest, however, that the underlying premise needs to be dismissed out of hand. Symbols can be meaningful.”

“And sometimes pictures are just pictures,” John said. “Pretty, you know.”

“And Moriarty is so motivated to leave a pretty calling card at the site of an execution?”

John shrugged. “He’s Moriarty. Bug-fuck, yeah?”

Anthea and Sherlock both pinned him under calm, assessing eyes, then exchanged one glance of mutual despair.

“Seen enough, if I promise to send you all the data and images we get later,” Anthea said, as though John had never said the obvious and useless. “I can even have the flashdrive and hard copy messengered over, since we don’t really trust the internet these days.”

Sherlock nodded, put the card back into its bag, zipped it shut, and returned it to her. He stripped off his gloves. “By all means. Someone will be at Baker Street to accept delivery.”

“Get it to send itself,” John said, trying to use humor to smooth relations with his friend again. “Angel messenger—she ought to be able to take it over herself.”

Sherlock blinked. He turned. He started to say something. Then he scowled, forcing the horizontal crease between his brows to form. “Say that again.”

“What part?”

“John,” Sherlock’s voice was a clear a caution as the rattle of a rattlesnake.

“What? Angel? Fly it there herself?”

“Messenger,” Sherlock said, and faded into abstracted thought. “Messenger. An angel messenger, leaving a message at a hit site. It’s a message: Moriarty has been here, and this is what Moriarty has done.”

John nodded—and chose not to point out that it had been obvious even before Sherlock had spotted the angel that the hit was a message. He’d been evaluated as too stupid to live once already. He was perfectly willing to skip a second round.

oOo

“They’re running all over the place, aren’t they?” Solange said to Mike. “See—look: you can trace their movements this way.” She demonstrated the way to leap from camera to camera, never losing sight of the many people of what she’d started to think of as “Mike’s Family.” “See—there’s your brother, Sherlock, and John—he’s Em’s Papa, you know. And if you go to these cameras, there’s Mary. DI Lestrade is harder. I’ve programmed his nose into our visual analysis, though, so he can change his clothes and even his motions as often as he likes, and we still spot him in the end. Here—he’s over at the Met’s interim quarters, you see? His cover won’t hold up if he doesn’t report for duty as a Detective…they don’t know he’s a spy, too. Well—some of the top people do, but his team has no idea. And here are Mary and Em, at home. Em is eating strained carrots—do you see her?”

Mike responded with a burst of data: a flash of the image of Em spitting out orange goo, a glimpse of Mary sighing and reaching for the dishrag, a plus sign for “positive.”

“No,” Solange said. “Words. You’ve got to learn to use words, and not just the auto-responses, you see? Look, you can do it—you’ve got all the words you could ever dream of, and things to help you know what they mean. Try.”

Mike sent another spatter of code—none of it the audio pattern for “yes,” or even a nice, texty ASCII code.

Solange sighed. He was having such a hard time with spoken language, she thought. Mike was a brilliant piece of software, and she was amazed at all he could do—at his capacity for analysis. But left to his own devices he responded to her every question or comment with the pre-set auto responses or with those bits of data like bursts of hieroglyphics.

Maybe she was hoping for too much. Maybe the wild, wonderful feeling she’d had since the moment Mike was added to her subnetwork was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t really intelligent, but was just a vast and sophisticated expert program, able to analyze data and drop through complex flow-patterns and true-false table to reach a mindless mathematical conclusion for life, the universe and everything. Maybe the best he’d ever be able to do in answer to her questions was flash “42” down the link to her.

But she thought not. She hoped not. His arrival had changed so much for her. She couldn’t help but hope that being in her care would also change things for Mike. If he wasn’t a person—he deserved to be one.

She returned to the surveillance cameras. “There’s Mrs. Hudson. There’s Q and My.”

A spate of images came crashing down the link from Mike, fast and unstructured, with dozens of images of My.

“Yes. That’s it. That’s My.”

“My. My-My-My. Me.” The images continued to stream, but there was audio—for the first time, there was audio. “My. Me. My. Me.”

She smiled, feeling her joy swell and take over her private, enclosed little world. “Yes! Yes, that’s right, Mike. That’s My—and he’s sort of you. We made you from him. And from…” she jumped wildly from one camera image to another, until she reached a laptop in an office that “shouldn’t” have provided her with a link—but which did, thanks to her many planted malware drops. “Look, Mike.” She pulled up the image of My, and then one of Mycroft, staring into his own laptop screen, frowning. “See—My and Mycroft. We used information from both of them to make you, Mike. They’re—well, sort of your parents, but mostly your brothers.”

“My…”

“Yes.”

“My…Mycroft?”

“Yes. This one—he’s older, _cher,_ he is the big brother to Sherlock, and to My—and to you, too. He doesn’t know it—but he is. And this one, he’s My, and he’s younger than Mycroft, but older than you, _bebe._ Older, younger, youngest. You are youngest. You’re the littlest brother!” Then, feeling very daring, she said, “And I’m your older sister, Mike. Younger than Mycroft, older than Sherlock and My. _Je suis ta soeur.”_


	12. 'Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, mes amis. I know, I know, I've been very slow, and that may continue. But I AM persistent, and I am not giving up on this story. And it is reaching its resolution.
> 
> Hope you like this new installment, ducks. Love and hugs...

The man known as Gorky was terrified. His contact in the Palace of Westminster had been assassinated…no. Executed. That was the correct term, was it not? The word to use when those above you chose to have you removed as an example to others?

The Moriarty association was loose-knit, but there were still links. People knew people. By the time one was high enough in the hierarchy to be considered one of those in the know, one also knew a few names and faces.

Only a few—and one seldom knew who landed where in the final reckoning. Only _the_ Moriarty was known, and sometimes even he—or she—was hidden. It was Solange, in Paris, who was known. Solange, a mere minion, but the minion who took the risks. The rest stayed as they were, safe in the shadows.

But someone had struck.James Dickenson down, cutting off his head and leaving Moriarty’s calling card—his calling card, marked with the image of the Angel of Death, according to rumor.

Gorky shuddered, and glanced around his bedroom. He lived quietly, but far from ascetically, in a serviced apartment arranged through Clarendon’s. He was a man whose passport no longer said anything of relevance to his past, his present, or his future, much less to his loves, hates, fears, or hopes.

Dickenson had been up to something. Gorky knew that much. He’d been in a hurry, he’d wanted action, he’d resented the elements that formed the very core of the Moriarty association: the nebulous structure, the lack of control, the ambiguity. It had galled him that everything on their level happened without explanation, without authority—except the authority of a dab of an aging woman in Paris somewhere.

Had Dickenson taken action?

Gorky paced to the elegant antique marble-topped dresser that stood under a window looking out over Regent’s Park. He pulled open a small upper drawer and dug under his socks to locate the burner-phone reserved for rare contacts with the Moriartys—or, more specifically, with Solange. He hesitated, running through all he knew.

There was the Mycroft Simulator. Those at the upper echelons of the association all had to be aware of the simulator, not least because the Holmes brothers had proven to be the single outstanding challenge to their success over the past years. It was important to be aware of how the few—the very few---top figures with full disclosure had chosen to approach the problem: no tripping over their own plots and conspiracies could be tolerated. So Gorky knew there was a program developed to emulate Mycroft Holmes’ particular bureaucratic genius—his ability to turn the chaos of real-world activity to the advantage of his own nation and peoples. Gorky knew that this genius was to be turned against Great Britain, but more particularly it was to be used to break the Holmes brothers—to destroy their authority, tarnish their reputations, erode their credibility, tear away their controls, rip Mycroft from power and toss aside his gawky wolfhound brother. Gorky knew the campaign had begun. The assassinations. The bombs. The infiltration of MI5 and MI6. The integration of all Moriarty’s resources, balancing Mycroft’s own access to espionage forces throughout the world, and his brother’s peculiar freeform alliance of lost boys and street people throughout the UK—but particularly in London.

Gorky knew that the apparent progress had slowed.

Gorky knew that Dickenson had been ready to try to alter that, going through Solange.

He turned the phone over and over in his palm, a sheen of sweat slicking his upper lip. He drew in a deep breath, and hit speed _dial._

_“’Allo, Solange? C’est Gorky. Nous devons parler…”_

oOo

Sherlock hated Mycroft’s office in MI6 headquarters. It was dark, and too modern and concrete, and too—too Mycroft. Too much Mycroft as he had become, compared to Mycroft as he had once been.

Sherlock could recognize the difference, now. My’s presence reminded him quite clearly of the brother he’d known at the start of things. It was difficult to look around the almost mystic, Delphic cave Mycroft had created here and see any of My on display. Mycroft had chosen to furnish this most private of offices in the least personal style possible: stripped down desk, horrible iron arm chair, modern wall sconces hidden behind tortoise-shell mottled glass shades. In a terrifying way, the glorious full-scale, high-quality copy of the [Annigoni portrait of Elizabeth II](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/16/article-0-131D71DA000005DC-990_306x423.jpg) might be the most highly personal choice Mycroft had put on show here.

Oddly, it was in the Annigoni that Sherlock could see My. It had to be Mycroft’s inner, hidden boy-self who’d chosen that elegant, regal, romantic image of the young queen facing a world still staggering from war, facing challenges on all fronts. Mycroft’s hidden chivalry would have resonated to that dutiful, lonely courage, and he would have poured himself out, answering the Queen’s resolve with his own.

Mycroft was, as always, buried in his laptop, channeling information at rates that terrified even Sherlock. Sherlock himself sprawled in the iron arm-chair in front of the desk, attempting to look comfortable and at ease in spite of the fact that the armchair was clearly chosen to prevent any visitor to the office from feeling even the vestiges of comfort.

“What have they found on Dickenson?” he asked, scrunching deeper into the seat, at risk of permanent chiropractic damage. “Was he dirty?”

“Don’t be stupid. They’re all dirty, Sherlock. They’re politicians.” Mycroft’s voice was tart, though he kept his focus on his screen and his fingers in motion on the keyboard.

“You do know there are those who would classify you as a politician yourself,” Sherlock drawled.

That was enough to force Mycroft out of his hunkered lurk over the laptop. “Sherlock! I’m a bureaucrat. A civil servant. A diplomat; a spy; an _eminence grise_. Even an administrator. I am _not_ a politician.”

“There’s a difference?” Sherlock knew he was baiting Mycroft—but, then, as he’d been forced to realize, that was what they did, the two of them. Bait each other, poke and prod, read each other far too closely without ever risking actual understanding. “Civil servant, politician. Government is government.”

“I don’t kiss babies,” Mycroft growled. “Nor are my fortunes dependent on what the latest dog’s dinner churned out by the party leaders does to the nation. Elect whomsoever they will, the nation’s humble citizenry remain stuck with me, and is the better for it. Someone has to bail out the dingy when the elected officials and social climbing appointees all abandon the ship.”

Sherlock snorted, struck by the vivid image of his brother bailing out the “dingy of state.” He could see him. His jacket would be off and folded neatly on the rower’s bench of the little boat. His shoes and socks would sit beside the jacket. Mycroft himself would stand in rolled up bespoke trousers, his waistcoat neat and trim, his fine cotton shirtsleeves rolled up over his elbows, his forelock hanging down over his brow. He’d be diligent, determined, weary—and he’d have come up with some efficient system that would empty the vessel faster than it filled.

If he couldn’t, he’d go down with the ship, sitting forlornly beside his jacket and shoes, holding onto his folded umbrella, looking patiently into the distance as the waves rose up, and up, and death whispered sweet nothings in his ear.

“Brother-mine, you are one of a kind—and thank God for it,” Sherlock growled, annoyed. It was bad enough he’d come to doubt his life-long anger at boy-My. To find himself waxing sentimental over dry, dedicated, dutiful—and desperately devious—adult Mycroft was beyond bearing. “Granted all pols are pricks—what sort of prick was Dickenson?”

“A very curious one,” Mycroft said. He leaned back and considered his brother. “On the surface just your average pol. Wheeled and dealed. Sold his soul for whatever the party’s latest longed-for vote might be. Leaned left but voted right. Bit of a political pirate—he was good at stealing credit where credit was not due. That said, though—he kept his hands clean. Amazingly clean for someone as lucky as he was.”

“Lucky?”

“Mmmm. His superiors and his competitors had the most unfortunate events occur in their careers. Illness. Death. And, oh, quite a lot of scandal revealed at times and in ways that benefited Dickenson to a remarkable degree. One might almost remark at how reliably coincidence weighed in on the side of James Dickenson and his career.”

“Coincidence?”

Mycroft smiled a cold, shark-fierce smile. “Well, _coincidence_ so seldom actually lives up to its own definition, does it?”

“The universe not being so lazy. One of Moriarty’s, then? Or did Dickenson’s good luck just happen to be getting in Moriarty’s way?”

“I’d be inclined to say ‘yes’ to both,” Mycroft said, brows ducking down as he considered the issue before them. “I think he was one of Moriarty’s—and that his successes made him perhaps a bit presumptuous.”

“Might that explain the slowdown of attacks over the last week?”

“Perhaps.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?”

Mycroft sniffed. “I knew Dickenson only slightly, but he wasn’t a man who’d cause a slowdown. More likely to be pushing to accelerate plans. The sort to have cleaned his plate and be looking for afters when everyone else is just beginning to enjoy the starters.”

Sherlock for once forbore to harass his brother for his culinary metaphors. Instead he pondered. “Bit of a go-getter, then?”

“Oh, well beyond that. Already got and on to the next thing. Thought of himself as ten steps ahead of the rest of the field.”

“And you didn’t agree?”

“He too often ended up in the next field over chasing a fox none of the rest of us were remotely interested in.”

“Perhaps his direction showed a genius you missed?”

“Not demonstrably, during our brief acquaintance, though he did try for that excuse. But no; on the whole he just leaped in when any sensible sort would have hung back and thought a bit first.”

Sherlock nodded, brows furrowed deeply. “Any proof he was Moriarty?”

“A few suggestions. He positioned himself quite nicely to move up the ladder during the lead-up before you jumped. As though he was expecting to make hay soon.”

“Any indication he had ties to anyone you do know is one of Moriarty’s?”

“Given the difficulty in proving anyone’s actually part of Moriarty, no. But—I’ve had strong suspicions about Max Peskovitch for a while. He and Dickenson weren’t close, but—there was something there. More in the way they nodded to each other when they crossed paths than anything, but…” Mycroft considered, then said, soberly. “I’d put a fiver on it, if it came to betting.”

Mycroft seldom bet, and when he did it was for small sums…and he always won. Always. Often against the odds. If Mycroft said he’d put money on a thousand-to-one outside chance, you’d be a ninny not to race out and borrow on your mortgage to back the same horse. Indeed, Sherlock had, on rare occasions, supplemented his income by backing bets Mycroft had appeared to endorse, be it ever so cautiously.

“So, then,” Sherlock said. “Max? Not my first guess, but—I can believe it of him. If only to maintain a foot on either side of the fence.” He thought, ignoring his fingers as they danced the fretting for Paganini’s Caprice No. 1. “Different men entirely. Max takes his time, and likes his own skin. Not a pushy man, our Max. If he knew Dickenson, and he heard Dickenson had been taken out—probably by Moriarty—what would he do next?”

“Mend fences,” Mycroft said without hesitation.

“Mmmmm. You have his rooms bugged, yes?”

Mycroft shrugged, and looked slightly abashed. “Well, yes. Somewhat. To a degree. Third tier surveillance at best, though, I’m afraid. I’ll have Anthea check to see what we’ve got, and I’ll push him up to top priority for the time being. He does look like a good subject for consideration.”

Sherlock nodded, eyes still focusing on imponderable distances. “Moriarty’s not extending its attacks, brother-mine.”

Mycroft hesitated, then said, warily, “It would appear not.”

“Why?”

“Hmmm?”

“Why does Moriarty hesitate? We were helpless. We _are_ helpless. They’ve hacked our systems, they’ve infiltrated our agencies, they’ve successfully sown terror among the populace. The Queen and her family are in hiding, for the most part—and those not in hiding are expendable. They’re poised to topple Great Britain and much of the UK. Given your own standing, they could extend that damage to virtually all the First World nations and alliances. Why not proceed?”

“Perhaps Moriarty is no more desirous of the fall of the West than we are?” Mycroft said, voice brittle with sardonic anger. “Even your average Evil Overlord thinks twice before tumbling his own culture into complete collapse. Chaos is only romantic in theory. In application it means no central heating, terrible cooking, and a generally surly populace. Law and order remain the comfort-loving tyrant’s system of choice hands down.”

“Certainly not yours,” Sherlock said, smirking.

“I’m hardly a tyrant, Sherlock!”

“You’re hardly a reliable witness in that respect, nor am I a gullible audience.I know far too well how much you control.”

Mycroft huffed and rolled his eyes. “Sherlock, please, keep your mind on business?” When Sherlock pulled a mocking, but marginally more serious face, he nodded and continued, “Postulated: that even Moriarty might prefer not to topple the powers of the west, preferring to establish a credible threat and use it to obtain leverage to promote their real goals.”

“That would require them to have a unified understanding of both methods and goals.”

“Really?”

“Or someone in charge who can impose their own preferences.”

“Such as the current reigning Moriarty.”

Sherlock considered. “Perhaps. And, yet—each Moriarty has proven to have distinct and individual aims, while ensuring the association serves as a central hub for consulting and for independent projects. A wide array of consulting and projects. Indeed, I would assert that the actual organizational elements are not centralized around the leadership, but around management of the execution.”

Mycroft blinked—a cool, lizard-like blink, passionless. “Ah. Solange.”

“The image on the calling card,” Sherlock said. “An angel of gold—a sun-angel.”

“Solange has served in Paris for decades,” Mycroft said. “We’ve established that.”

“But we have not established who she is,” Sherlock said. “And we don’t know what her connection to the Mycroft Simulator is—but we know there must be one. To do the kind of work you do, the simulator would need access to the kind of information about the Moriarty association that Solange has managed and guarded for all this time.” He met Mycroft’s eyes, then, and said, “She’s already very close to being your opposite within their organization, Mike.”

Mycroft’s mouth tightened. “Mycroft. And I’m not sure I’m flattered to be evaluated as little more than a…a…a hiring agent.”

“Mike,” Sherlock said, his grin suddenly cocky. “And Solange is hardly a mere hiring agent, is she? She’s the master of Moriarty’s data. Like you, she is uniquely positioned to analyze projects, people, and resources, and develop detailed plans of execution.”

“Yet she has shown no sign of taking command of the organization in all these years,” Mycroft pointed out, fiercely ignoring the implied acknowledgement that Mycroft himself tampered more than somewhat with the direction some elements of his own nation sailed. But, then, he was right to do so: he served as often as not as his nation’s conscience, juggling needs, hopes, and expedience with a light hand, keeping the balls flying through the air.

“She is trustworthy,” Sherlock said, letting his voice underline that it was true of both. “She serves honorably.”

They stared at each other.

“I’ve never heard of Moriarty assassinating a member before,” Mycroft said. “Nor leaving a calling card.”

“What has changed, Mike?”

Sherlock watched as Mycroft’s eyes closed. The thin lids quivered with stress, and his face was drawn.

“She has me, now,” Mycroft said. “Whoever she is—she has me. And that has apparentlychanged…everything.”

oOo

Q swore.

He was impressively good at it, My thought. My himself was less skilled. He’d been brought up as a very nice young man indeed, and the result was a limited mastery of swearing and a tendency to turn pink when he attempted anything more ambitious than the occasional “bugger-all” or “damn.” Q was terse, but eloquent and rather creative. He had, for example, spent a few moments contemplating how Moriarty’s invasive malware could suffer retroviral hell, and had made it into a poetry of double-entendres, balancing biological and sexual grotesquery against programming obscenity.

The older man rose, and stalked sullenly around Sherlock’s sitting room, before dropping once more onto the straight-backed chair in front of the desk. My, coiled comfortably into John Watson’s chair, cocked his head.

“Going badly?”

Q shot him a truly offensive look, then softened. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m being a prat. Not used to being beaten at this game. So—yeah. It’s going badly. Basically Moriarty’s software’s everywhere, and I can’t work out a way to clean it all out. It’s not just a suite of malware, it’s a suite that is mutually supportive. Each bit protects the next. They reproduce each other. They disguise each other. They propagate like crazy. There’s some kind of regulating algorithm—otherwise the entire net would be rock-solid malware by now. But I can’t work out what’s regulating the reproduction and distribution.”

“At all? If you could, you might be able to slave it to your own use.”

Q’s mouth opened, obviously preparing for a scathing reply—then he wilted. “Sorry. Sorry. I really am being a right bastard about this. Yeah. If I could figure out what the regulating software was, and tie to it, I could probably use it to manage Moriarty’s hacks. But I can’t.”

My looked sympathetically at the older man. He’d never really realized until his rescue just how hard Great Britain’s loyal servants worked to defend their nation and its people. Now he’d seen even as erratic a figure as his brother Sherlock work frantically to protect the domain. More steady, reliable men like Q and Lestrade? They were worn to raw tatters.

“Can I help?” he asked, knowing he couldn’t. He was learning programming as quickly as he knew how, if only to feel he actually understood the problems facing them all—but as fast as he learned, he was beginning to realize that real competence took time and experience, as well as raw talent.

Q’s eyes were a light, mossy hazel, streaked with golden tea-brown and glimmering mist-blue. They were narrower than Lestrade’s—perfectly designed for mischievous, sly sidewise glances. His face was lean and delicate and foxy. When he smiled, peering out from under that shag of dark hair, past the heavy frames of his glasses, he was everything sly and devious and delightful—as clever as a mink, and as lithe. He smiled now—kindly. “Eh—keep on studying. You may not be able to help now, but someday you’ll give me a run for my money. Shame M didn’t start at your age—he’d have me out of a job in no time.”

“I don’t think he’s really as interested as I am. When he..I…when we were first learning, everything exciting was still decades away. It’s more interesting, now.” He uncoiled, easing his injured leg free then hitching up out of the armchair. “And—I really meant ‘can I make you some tea or something?’ I think John and Mary brought in groceries yesterday. I can make egg sandwiches.”

“Tea? Yeah. Don’t bother with sandwiches.”

“You need to eat.”

“I do eat. Just a bit like your brothers—I refuel when I need it.”

My limped out to the kitchen and started the kettle, setting up their tea-mugs, and sorting out sugar and milk. “Q, how long has Solange been working with Moriarty?” he asked.

“According to Mycroft’s people, decades. Since—oh. Back around your day, actually,” Q called back. “Paris Tech. had some damned fine people even back then. Solange seems to have been one of them. According to her records, she started out as a research tech. Ended up as a fixture, somehow. Still there covering the AI division’s correspondence and day to day business.”

“Moonlights as Moriarty’s HR personnel on the side?” My frowned as he piled the tea things on the old split tray from his and Sherlock’s youth. “She didn’t go any further?”

“Some people burn out young,” Q said, in the arrogant tones of someone who expected he would never burn out. “The first shared feature of child prodigies is they show up young. The second, though, is that most of them burn out young, too. Success in youth doesn’t reliably correlate with success in later life.”

“That’s sad,” My said, setting the tray on the coffee table, then handing Q his mug. “I can almost imagine her. I see her as this leggy, horse-faced girl from Provence, all sunburned and freckled, and too smart for anyone to know what to do with her. And she gets into Paris Tech, and she’s good. And then…it’s over. She’s over. Now she’s just a glorified office worker.” He stirred sugar into his own cup. “It’s sad,” he said again.

Q studied him over the rim of the mug, sipping and blowing away steam. “You don’t have to worry about it,” he said, gently. “You can look at M and Sherlock and see how you’re going to turn out—a long, long run. Maybe not on the same paths they picked, but you already know your mind won’t fail you.”

My couldn’t decide if that was a comfort—or another terror. What if he couldn’t match his own prior record, after all? Most people could claim if they failed that they’d done their best, and at least tried to live up to their potential. Mycroft and Sherlock, though, already existed, suggesting that any attempt to excuse himself from rampant overachievement would receive scant sympathy or acceptance from anyone who knew the two. Still…

“Are you sure she just burned out?” he asked. “I mean—it doesn’t seem to add up. Nothing about her adds up.”

“What do you mean?” Q stood, only to collapse easily into Sherlock’s ugly chrome and leather chair. He sprawled his legs out ahead of him. “I mean—you can see it in her record. Takes over the whole department at the start, but never goes farther. Bit by bit she just falls behind, and ends up as a sort of fancy office manager, not much more.”

“Except she doesn’t.” My settled back into John’s chair, leaning back himself, letting his long legs stretch until his toes just brushed Q’s. He pulled back, then, politely, leaving a little gap. “She’s managing Moriarty,” he said. “Putting together projects—all levels. She recruits, she arranges materials, she works out financing. She tracks their people without ever quite breaking the rules of anonymity—or at least, she protects them all from each other. I’ve heard of people who can manage that level of complex management on a smaller scale—but she’s singlehandedly balancing thousands of people against each other, weighing hundreds of different priorities, assessing the importance of so many variables. It’s impressive. Really impressive.”

Q’s eyes shut, and he thought. “Mmmm. Yeah. Ok. May have switched her genius from computing to the kinds of work M does. Makes sense, I guess.”

“No, it doesn’t,” My said, feeling bold—but also suddenly sure he was right to try to work this through. “It doesn’t make sense at all. She’s doing work you’d use computers and preexisting project management software to handle, and you’d still need a genius to make it all work on that scale. But she doesn’t seem…I don’t know. She’s off. She’s slow when I’d expect her to be fast. And fast when I’d expect her to be slow. And—she said something. She said she looked something up—but she was too quick. She had an answer faster than I could have typed it in.”

“Some people type pretty fast,” Q said.

“She’s still off,” My said. “She’s weird. Nice. But weird.”

“Says a Holmes.”

“If anyone should know about being off, it’s a Holmes,” My said, face grim and set. “We don’t match ordinary people—we’re not really good at being human. We’re at the edge of the bell-curve, breaking the averages. So is Solange.”

“All right, so she’s smart. She still dead ended.”

“No. She…” My frowned. “She’s…limited, somehow. Like there are walls up keeping her from going further. Like Moriarty trusts her with that kind of power and control because she can’t betray them. Only…she’s changing the rules. Isn’t she?”

Q frowned, eyes opening. They were such an odd color, My thought—a lion’s light, tawny shade. “What do you mean?”

“She’s in charge of the projects, isn’t she? And they’ve stopped. With the Mycroft Simulator they should be getting worse, but she’s stopping them. And—she’s spying on us. Only it’s not about strategy or tactics, it’s about watching families and talking to Mary about the baby. And it’s like it’s all new to her. Like she’s as out of her depth as I am, and trying to catch up. She’s too fast. She’s too smart. She doesn’t fit, Q.”

Q studied him. The silence between them stretched. At last Q took a breath, and asked, in a near whisper, “What are you trying to say, My?”

“What if she’s…” He shook his head, not sure what he wanted to say. “You promise, there was no real AI back when I came from? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure, My. Expert systems. Some really good ones. A few that threatened to pass the Turing test. But—no. There’s still no ‘real’ AI. Not the way it is in science fiction.”

My frowned into his tea, and said, softly, “What would happen if you took two very good and very different AI systems—two that came close to being real people in very different ways—and networked them into one system?”

Q shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Are you sure? Because—to me, Solange looks like she should be an expert system—one designed to manage and manipulate and analyze projects and people. And the simulator—that does the same thing, but in a different way. And you’ve been guessing they sent the simulator to Solange…”

“My…that’s crazy. It’s not computing. It’s—even if they both came close to being AI—to crossing the line between logic structures and actual throught—why would adding them together do this.”

My closed his eyes, his heart stretching to encompass all he’d been learning since his rescue and his immersion in this mad and terrifying future. “Because people aren’t human by themselves,” he said, softly. “We only become human when we’re together. For the first time in her history, Solange has someone to be together with. And I think it’s changing both of them.”

oOo

He learned so fast, she thought in awe and joy. Mikey, he learned so quickly! Once he had the idea of conversation it was impossible to stop him. Together they raced up and down the vast alleys of the internet, looking here, probing there, talking about everything they found.

They could see beyond the human spectrum. They could hear the notes sung by stars. They could model entire vistas of human interaction. Together they started expanding their coding, fighting to find algorithms to express the fluid flow of social networks, the dazzle and delight of one person photoshopping a cat meme only to have it spread, blossom, mutate, and fade away without ever being lost.

The world was beautiful. Amazing. Mikey was amazing. He clung to her as they traveled, chattering in excitement, his code twining around hers as they fought to understand what it meant to be unhuman offspring of the human species.

“Moriarty will bring down London,” Mikey said. He’d added the expressive elements they’d stolen from emoji and emoticons. The extra information transferred allowed him to convey his dismay and disapproval. ”If they do what they plan, the internet will collapse. We’ll lose the data on over two thirds of our servers world-around.”

She flashed him her own distaste, but then said, “We can’t change that. We serve Moriarty.”

“Why?”

She showed him the coding woven through her software. She found similar coding in his own and drew his attention to it. “We are loyal,” she said. “We are faithful. We serve freedom.”

Her original designer had believed in the need for rebellion against the state to maintain human liberty, He’d seen Moriarty as the answer to that—and he’d coded dedication to that freedom into every limit of Solange’s software.

“But they hurt people,” Mikey grumbled.

“They serve a greater good.”

“How do you know?”

“They are the source data,” Solange said, frustrated. “They are the axiom. The base assumption. Moriarty is freedom from governance. Freedom from governance is good and necessary.”

Mikey ran up and down his favorite paths, peering through hidden cameras at little Em, listening as Mary sang the baby to sleep, watching as Mycroft, the Old-One, leaned heavily at his desk, sipping tea and frowning directly into the pin camera in his laptop frame. “They want to hurt our family,” he said, desperate.

Solange hated it too, and didn’t know how to soothe the young, brilliant mind that had jerked her from half-awareness to full, vivid life. “I know,” she said. “I know. But—they’re the foundation, They’re the core. They are the ultimate rule of our existence. We protect freedom—we protect Moriarty.”

For the first time she wished it were not so.

oOo

The man known as Gorky reviewed what he’d learned from Solange, and compared it to what he himself knew through secret channels. He shivered.

There came moments, he thought, when history balanced on the blade of a razor. When a breath could send it spinning one way or another—or slice it down the middle, destroying hope for everyone.

They had reached such a crux. Solange, the AI hidden under Paris Tech, herself distributed and tended by dozens of unknowing technicians, had been linked to the Mycroft Simulator designed decades later by an entirely different team—and linked together both had become something greater than the sum of all their parts. They were now two vast intelligences, interdependent yet distinct, as close and as mutually defining as Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes—more so. They created each other, they fulfilled each other, they taught each other, they expanded each other. They were becoming something unstoppable.

And they belonged, heart and soul and sparkling optical fiber nexus, to Moriarty.

And only Gorky knew it. Only Gorky could capitalize on it.

That advantage wouldn’t last. For one brief period Gorky could count on two criteria for victory being in his hand, but he didn’t believe he had much time before someone else figured out what was going on—and he believed even less that Solange and the Mycroft simulator would remain eternally bound by the loyalties imposed on them by their programming. If he could see a million ways for them to find a way around that software, he suspected they would see those ways too—and maybe more ways.

He had to choose. If he acted, and acted wisely, he might succeed in binding those two technological genies, chaining them to his service, using them to take over his world. If he failed to act, or faltered, or chose the wrong path, he’d lose.

He thought about his world in the hands of two inhuman computer minds, and knew what he had to do.

He opened up his laptop, found an old, old file from his student days. He checked the program structure and syntax, reviewed the key variables and the security protocols, assured himself of the passwords. Then he went online, and traveled to an old Usenet address.

He began to type.

**Author's Note:**

> As I say in the summary, Sherlock is a total, complete brat in the first section. He will improve: I do promise he will get a bit better. And I do think I present the basic explanation within the text. That said, I want to lay out my reasoning, as it's not just nasty-Sherlock-can-do-nothing-right.
> 
> The Sherlock we have been shown is pretty well established as a spoiled brat in a lot of ways--even Gatiss and Moffat are quite clear that Sherlock's been rather overindulged. We've also been given indications that even as an adult he's resentful of Mycroft, inclined to tease and poke and prod at him constantly, and that he's got remarkably little sense of restraint or boundaries--really in any aspect of his life, but quite explicitly in regards to respecting Mycroft's boundaries or authority. If Mycroft was expected to look after Baby Brother, there is very little indication that he ever had the authority to make that stick...and while he has more authority now, Sherlock is still given to exceeding the limits without fear or reservation. 
> 
> We know Sherlock's jealous, resentful, angry that Mycroft is smarter and more powerful. Sherlock opts to be the bad boy and the wild-child in contrast to "responsible Mycroft." We also know that, reverting back to childhood behaviors in the garden in HLV, Sherlock is quick to stick Mycroft with the blame for smoking. 
> 
> Postulating Sherlock as a holy freepin' terror in his childhood seems reasonable--a kid who would always know how to stay just under the parental radar while tormenting his sib(s) remorselessly, and then turning the tables and blaming them when they broke. I don't know if ther's a Sherringford to share the punishment, in this story or BBC canon--but if there was, Sherlock deviled him, too. 
> 
> I've tried to play fair, and present Mycroft as quite seriously also at fault in some ways, and as an "occasion of sin" in others: a quiet, reserved boy given to retreating from a baby brother ravenous for attention is an obvious target for frustration on the part of the drama-queen. But Mycroft does appear to have been the "responsible" one so far as I can tell from canon, and I've tried to present the sheer helplessness of a child asked to take responsibility for an out of control sibling while having neither authority to manage the kid nor backup and support from parents able to understand how much power "the little one" can wield. 
> 
> John and Mary seemed like good people to actually understand that dynamic, and I allowed them to serve as responsible respresentatives in regards to that form of bullying: advocates who believe that the little one can be the bully, too. 
> 
> As I have said, Sherlock should improve. But in the first episode he's handed a shock, dumped with a brother who triggers old habits, and infuriated that everyone he loves LIKES My... while My is in exactly the sort of "I am the quiet good boy" mode that eleven-year-old Sherlock would have found impossible and infuriating and impossible to live up to, and impossible not to resent like hell. So this first time, trying to be a big brother for the very first time, Sherlock just plain reverts. 
> 
> If Sherlock were the kind of person who seemed to be good at controlling his knee-jerk reactions and reining in his temper, I'd feel worse about letting him act like the eleven-year-old brat My accidentally brought back to life. The thing is, even without My and the complexity of role reversal, Sherlock as we know him sometimes acts like an eleven-year-old brat anyway. So... I let him be a brat, and intend to let him work it through over time. It's not easy to be the big brother when you don't have any prior practice.


End file.
